GOTM8 Start Positions Scenario

Quick Start Challenge
How to play
Timelines
Scoring



Civ3 Opening Plays
- Improving Terrain
- Terrain basics
- Terrain types
- ID your power
- Rivers and position
- Forestry operations

Opening Sequence Examples
- GOTM8 June 2002
- Mixed Terrain - Germany
- Flood Plain - Russia
How the AI plays
Balance food/shields
"Pop rushing"
Balance and rush
When to relocate
Playing "Catch up"
- Play the example scenario

- GOTM10 August 2002
- Grassland - Iroquois
- Mixed Hills - French
- Green Caldera - Aztecs
- Play the example scenario


Civ3 Example Games
- GOTM9 Japan Campaign
(ancient age warfare example)
- Index


List of updates to this article

Items below this point
are maintained seperately
from this strategy article
and may not always available.

Known Bugs and Glitches

- The Corona Bug
- The Scared2Death Bug

This page will help you download and configure the GOTM8 start positions replay scenario file.

GOTM8 was originally played at the monarchy difficulty level on the V1.21. If you download the original save game file from the Civfanatics website, you can play the game as Germany, just as if you were playing the human player. When you download the GOTM8 start positions replay scenario you will have the choice of playing any of the original players’ start positions just by choosing the name of the civilization you would like to take control of to see if you can play a better game with their start position than was played during the original game.

Additional Civilizations ( Rome and Greece)

This scenario file includes two additional civilizations that were not originally on the GOTM8 map. If you wish to play the GOTM8 game with only the civilizations that were included in the original game, you must make some careful choices in the starting game menu. The two civilizations you will want to exclude will be Rome and Greece. Choose any one of the other civilizations to be your civilization for the game. Then use the right hand side of the player setup menu to make sure that each one of the remaining six civilizations that you want to have as your rivals is displayed in one of the drop down menus. The last two drop down menu boxes should display the word “NONE” in order to make sure that the last two civilizations (Rome and Greece) will be excluded from the game. Rome and Greece should not appear as a listed opponent in any of the six drop down menus that do not say “NONE”. You also need to make certain that none of the drop down menus display “Random” as an option for one of your opponents.

The start positions are all pre-assigned to the correct locations on the map but you may choose the civilization you will play. The image above displays the correct setup options if you wish to play as Japan in the correct original start position for Japan and without allowing the two added civilizations (Rome and Greece) to appear in the game.

When you select “Your Civilization” to be someone different from the existing choice, you will usually see at least one of the options in the “Your Rivals” column automatically change to a setting of “Random”. You will need to double check the list of your rivals each time you reselect your civilization if the actual list of rivals matters to you in your intended game play sequence.

Are you the human or are you and AI clone?

The original game was played on the monarch difficulty level and this granted each of the AI civilizations an additional starting bonus of two defensive units and one offensive unit plus free support for four military units plus additional support for one additional military unit per town or city.

When you load the scenario and choose the civilization that you want to be, we are going to give you a free stack of units and 30 extra pieces of gold to let you configure your military to match what it should be as if you were the human player of the AI player in the position of the civilization you have chosen. Your stack of units will include more units than you need but you do not have enough gold in your treasury to keep them all alive for very long and still play the game. You will need to disband units to get your unit inventory pruned down to where you should be to match your chosen mode of play for the scenario. The table below lists the units you may allow yourself to keep depending on the civilization you have chosen to play as:

As the human player you will start the game with a total of nine units after you use the settler in your opening move (10 if you have the expansionist scout). This will put you at five units over the unit support level. If you do not disband other units, your extra 30 pieces of gold will be consumed within six turns and you will start to lose ground in this practice scenario. If you would like to disband the units in a way that does not artificially distort the shield production for your civilization, choose the units you should keep and make your initial movement choices for those units. Decide if you will plant the settler right away in the starting position and if you do, set the production queue initially to produce “Wealth”. Then disband all of the excess units except for the last two units that you can easily identify. Carefully consider your strategy options and select your initial build item. Remember that you get to keep three military units if you are pretending to be a pseudo Monarch AI and this will usually mean that your first build item is often not going to be a military unit.

There is no way to consistently equalize the AI cost factor monarch advantage that allows the AI players to complete every task at 9/10ths of the cost of the human player. The Monarch AI players would complete a settler for 27 shields and the equivalent of 36 food units while the human played would need 30 shields and 40 food units. The two excess units that you have saved can be disbanded in your capital city to rush your first two production items to help make your first 30 turns look more like they would look with the AI cost advantages. Make sure you do not use both of these shield bonuses to rush the same improvement or that will reduce some of the learning benefit you will gain by playing these start positions.

If you want to play the scenario as if you are the human player, just in a different position with a different civ, then you need to disband all the extra military units that you are given when the scenario loads. If you want to be precise, you will need to hold the extra military units in your capital for 4 turns to burn off the equivalent of 20 of the bonus gold unit out of your treasury and then move the units out of capital and disband them after the 5^th or 6^th turn to eliminate the extra financial drain on your treasury. You will have technically received a slight power boost in the first 5 or 6 turns, but the distance to the other civilizations should have prevented this from impacting the game progression.

Click here to download this GOTM8 scenario file for the original start positions. To use the file you will need to use the “Load Scenario” command in the main CIV3 game menu and then browse and find this “gotm8_original_start.bic” file in the location on your hard drive.

NOTE: you can also adjust the difficulty level setting for this map, so if you want to replay GOTM8 on chieftain level or on deity level, then all you need to do is make the correct civ choices and choose your difficulty level.