For a basic start guide, you can look at this one by Suede: http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=688606769 While the guide is helpful with your start, it does not give any goals or tips for the later part of the game.

If you want to watch a video on 1 per turn growth, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcFHSl4wqdE

For playstyles, these are the basic ones and their main focuses:

Fighter: Fighters generally focus on early-game aggression. They expand towards the enemy and either choke them or try for a kill. They usually operate above the unit-cap, and so tech ability will be limited in the late-game.

Carry: Carry focuses on early-game expansion. To do this, you need to be building alot of settlers, even through the early-middle medieval era. This will cause lower population in core cities and high-maintenance due to amount of workers, but by middle-late medieval, they will be able to create and support massive stacks, especially by using pop rush, plus being able to tech well.

Support: Fills in the gaps of the other two playstyles. They road to their allies and resources in order to provide necessary resources and luxuries for their team. Scouts the map. Their tech ability is usually pretty strong early-medieval due to more population in their core cities and libraries. While they can kill, usually they help assist in the kill.

A new player should choose one or a combination, and begin to become proficient in that playstyle. While you may choose a particular one, you may have to fall into another one in order to support your teammates in certain games.

Here are some pros and cons with the playstyles mentioned above:

Fighter
Pros:
-Highest probability of early kill.
-Always military ready.
-Able to seize key positions/resources in the early game.
-Keeps pressure on the enemies to prevent them from expanding
Cons:
-Lower tech ability outside of golden age.
-Fewer buildings in core cities.
-Left vulnerable if they lose many units attacking
-Does not usually have a huge amount of cities.

Carry
Pros:
-Lots of cities = Lots of unit support, meaning units don't cost gold per turn
-Highest teching power during the late-medieval and early-industrial.
-Massive stacks mid-late game and can easily replenish troops.
Cons:
-Lack of military in ancient and early medieval.
-Because of high amount of workers and low population, has middling tech ability in the early-medieval
-Open to attack early.
-Cannot afford to lose a city, even if the city is retaken
-Can overextend itself.
-Heavily reliant on luxuries.

Support
Pros:
-Good teching ability throughout the game.
-Helps the team by scouting and sentrying.
-Able to defend and assist in kills.
-Distractions and back-door attacks
Cons:
-Due to focusing on science and building-up core cities, may not have much of a military in the early-medieval.
-Can have trouble creating big stacks.

In MP in general, cities are usually built 1-2 tiles apart so that you can transfer units between cities in the same turn. 1 tile apart makes things safer, but gives less tiles to work with for each city to work with. In QC, cities that are built only 1 tile, are still good cities, because of the more abundance of food. While 2 tiles gives you more tiles to work with and that is needed with some starts for necessary food and shields, the advantage to 1 tile is that you can build the city quicker, and thus faster growth. Civ3 is all about speed, and even more so in QC. The faster you get your cities out and the faster you build them up, the faster you can produce buildings and units. This does not mean you should build every city like this, as that all depends on the terrain you have, but if the terrain is suitable, it can be very useful to build only 1 tile for several cities, and especially the poprush ones as these cities do not usually use many tiles and so would be a waste.

For my personal playstyle, I like to have at least 10, but preferably 15+. That amount of cities gives me the necessary defense I like and have a decent attacking stack, and in most cases still able to tech.

Carry generally has 20+ and sometimes 30+ cities.

Notes on cities:
- If you plan on building cities quickly, 8 cities in 20 turns is a good goal to aim for.
- A general good build order for your capital at start is, warrior/scout, worker, warrior/scout, granary, settler.
- 4 settlers from capital is a good stopping point so that the capital is then free to build units and its necessary buildings, like a library and if needed a harbor and offshore platform (added to monarchy in the newer versions of qc).
-When looking for good core cities, look for the shield equivalent of 2 hills or 2 mountains as these in addition to your main food tiles will provide the necessary shields you will need to produce the later units. If these tiles are not there, you have to come up the equivalent, like mining plains or desert or utilizing forest.
-Try and fit at least 5 core cities around your capital so there is less corruption problems.
-When building your first cities, it is good to have your 2nd city producing workers, but when the 3rd city is nearly finished with its granary, switch to preparing it for building settlers. This way you have a 2nd city producing a settler with your capital, and your workers are always close to the new territory.
-Pre-road cities so your settler can reach there quickly. Remember, the quicker you can get your settler to its city location, the faster your city can grow.
-2 forest chops are preferable for your capital granary. You can then build your 2nd city as early as turn 8.
-Build lots of workers so you can quickly improve your tiles, which will result in your cities becoming productive much faster.
-Core cities need to be able to produce a Knight/Cavalry in 2-3 turns.
-If expanding towards an enemy, look for good strategic defensive locations, like hills or behind rivers for the extra defense bonus. Cities on hills receive the 50% defense bonus.


Generally, a good build order for settlers at the start is warrior, settler, warrior, settler and later switch the warriors out for archers or spears. But if you have a good shield-producing tile like furs forest, you can switch that out earlier for spears and archers as you can build those in 1 turn, and even build 2 of them before switching to the settler and completing that in 1 turn.

Poprushing is an effective tactic in QC, and for that reason, Despotism is the best government to use. There can be certain times to switch to another government, but that requires having the time to switch to that government and certain conditions. Losing the poprush ability is a big con though.

While all playstyles tend to use this tactic for their outer cities, as you do not have to build up the city into a high population city, it is the most used in the Carry playstyle, due to the amount of cities it has and with that comes the usual problems, like corruption and time it takes; and so has more reason to use it. This helps the playstyle to quickly produce a stack, since it probably was not able to gradually produce one before, due to building cities.

Poprushing can be effective on any city, because all it requires is growth and 1 turn build time for most units. So cities using this tactic, only needs a tile or 2 before being able to pop rush a unit, so building cities close is very beneficial. You can usually obtain a unit every 2 turns, and with 10+ poprush cities, that adds up in units.


The absolutely essential need for poprushing is luxuries. If you do not have these, then poprushing is very limited and greatly setsback the Carry playstyle. You need at least 3 luxuries for a market to be useful and to able to poprush for a decent time, before the city will not be useable for the tactic. The more luxuries the better. If you have 5 luxuries and a market, the city should never go into disorder and you will be able to continously produce units. If you only have 2 luxuries, then the market is not useful, but the poprush city can still be somewhat useful. If you poprush 2 units in every poprush city and you have 10 of these cities, that is 20 units right there. You could poprush again, but the city will probably be unusable then on, depending on if you poprushed an improvement before this.

I hope I have told you some helpful things. Some of the goals and tips I have mentioned though, have exceptions. To know when to do certain things, and when to prioritize something else out of normal procedure, you will need to obtain lots of game experience.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me.

Join us at the CivPlayers Civ3 League for games! http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/gid/103582791432519323
Games are organised daily in the chatroom.