So I completed my first playthrough of CIV5....

Dalisclock

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Having not played a real Civ game since Civ2(Colonization, the Civ4 add-on/standalone, was the closest other game) it took me a little while to get into it and figure out what I was doing.

I have BNW and G+K installed. I played as the Babylonians, on a large or huge world(earth)with 5 other civs, from the beginning of time. Brazil, Russia, Ottomans, India and Portagul were the other civs, though most of the time I pretty much sat by and did my own thing. I engaged in one war during my history against the ottomans and only because he was being a bit of a jerk. Ghadi was on the far side of asia, with the ottomans and russia between me and him, with Brazil owning Africa and I much had Europe locked down. Maria had North America but I didn't meet her until later in the game. I will admit that I pretty got overwhelmed when I first saw the choice of civs and I kind of wished I'd done more research before I started.

I founded a religion, but never got very good at spreading it or even making the majority of my citizens follow it. I maxed out Liberty, Aesthetics and Rationalism, with some progress made down the Freedom Ideology before the game ending. I built more then my share of wonders, managed to get two nearby city-states to back me most of the time, but I think my big problem was that I took too long to specialize, putting a lot of effort into culture as opposed to science. As a result, my tech progress was far behind the real world. I didn't get the apollo program in place until nearly 2000 and ran out of time for the time ending before I got all the spaceship parts researched and built. Granted, most of the other civs weren't doing any better, and I was in the lead for science by 1950, with even brazil falling behind(though Pedro had culture locked up and won the time victory on points, with me in 2nd place).

I also noticed that combat in this game seems a lot harder then Civ 2, at least as far as taking cities. Also, it seems quite easy to go broke fighting a war. I realize that's the point(Militaries are expensive), but still.... Maybe I needed to play a military oriented civ if I'm going to seriously wage wars. Maybe the problem was that that was my first playthrough and it just took me quite a while to figure out all the new mechanics. Maybe I should have knocked brazil out of the game early instead of being his friend for all of history.

Any suggestions from some of the civ 5 veterans here on how to better deal with the next play-through(other then play according to my civs strengths)? If I try for the science/space race victory again, what's a good strategy for setting myself up for that?

I will admit that I like what they've done with civ 5. The religion mechanic is interesting(especially founding one), as is culture, ideologies and social policies. I'm still trying to get a better handle on the diplomacy/world congress part.
 
Sep 14, 2009
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Dalisclock said:
Having not played a real Civ game since Civ2(Colonization, the Civ4 add-on/standalone, was the closest other game) it took me a little while to get into it and figure out what I was doing.

I have BNW and G+K installed. I played as the Babylonians, on a large or huge world(earth)with 5 other civs, from the beginning of time. Brazil, Russia, Ottomans, India and Portagul were the other civs, though most of the time I pretty much sat by and did my own thing. I engaged in one war during my history against the ottomans and only because he was being a bit of a jerk. Ghadi was on the far side of asia, with the ottomans and russia between me and him, with Brazil owning Africa and I much had Europe locked down. Maria had North America but I didn't meet her until later in the game. I will admit that I pretty got overwhelmed when I first saw the choice of civs and I kind of wished I'd done more research before I started.

I founded a religion, but never got very good at spreading it or even making the majority of my citizens follow it. I maxed out Liberty, Aesthetics and Rationalism, with some progress made down the Freedom Ideology before the game ending. I built more then my share of wonders, managed to get two nearby city-states to back me most of the time, but I think my big problem was that I took too long to specialize, putting a lot of effort into culture as opposed to science. As a result, my tech progress was far behind the real world. I didn't get the apollo program in place until nearly 2000 and ran out of time for the time ending before I got all the spaceship parts researched and built. Granted, most of the other civs weren't doing any better, and I was in the lead for science by 1950, with even brazil falling behind(though Pedro had culture locked up and won the time victory on points, with me in 2nd place).

I also noticed that combat in this game seems a lot harder then Civ 2, at least as far as taking cities. Also, it seems quite easy to go broke fighting a war. I realize that's the point(Militaries are expensive), but still.... Maybe I needed to play a military oriented civ if I'm going to seriously wage wars. Maybe the problem was that that was my first playthrough and it just took me quite a while to figure out all the new mechanics. Maybe I should have knocked brazil out of the game early instead of being his friend for all of history.

Any suggestions from some of the civ 5 veterans here on how to better deal with the next play-through(other then play according to my civs strengths)? If I try for the science/space race victory again, what's a good strategy for setting myself up for that?

I will admit that I like what they've done with civ 5. The religion mechanic is interesting(especially founding one), as is culture, ideologies and social policies. I'm still trying to get a better handle on the diplomacy/world congress part.
now I'm by no means an expert at the game, and literally you could spend hours learning all sorts of tips and tricks on micro (and macro) managing your civilization for the best outcome.

they ran a simulation like a year ago (i think?) that debated "is it better to plant immediately, or spend 2-4 turns looking for a better settlement spot?"

if you have a decent starting spot with access to ocean/river, and have 3+ resource tiles..you probably are good to go, but unfortunately sometimes you get placed in asshole spots, and moving a turn or two away where you can see there are more resources makes it HIGHLY worth it in the longrun, I forgot how long it took but the simulation had the person who moved highly outdoing the person who settled immediately by a huge margin, but that was based on assumptions as well (the person who settled right away didn't have a good starting spot).

pro-tip at the beginning, take your warrior and find the nearest city state, "go to war" with them and steal their worker, then instantly make peace with them right afterwards, this won't net you any negative diplomacy with other civilizations and will grant you a free worker off the bat, this is a huge steal at the beginning considering the AI cheats as well, so fuck them and be cheap as well.

if you are REALLY dedicated to science/tech, you can open your city screens and micro-manage how your cities develop and what great people they strive towards. I almost always plant culture/science/production/religion on their own tiles to give me massive science/culture/production in the long run, but if you are oh...1900 A.D. and above it's *probably* more useful to just use them up instantly.

as you mentioned, armies are expensive, so I almost always get an archer and walls built in my cities at the beginning, then hardly use any warriors beyond that (besides for clearing barbs in the area or scouting for loot) until someone declares war on me, as you mentioned, cities are HARD to take if they are well defended, so given that your walls+archer will take out most of the baddies, you can buy/build warriors in the mean time if need be, otherwise it's a very useful way to save maintenance costs each turn.

I personally like getting city-states as my allies, as they provide you with their resources (which equals happiness) AND if they are anywhere near you or your enemies, they will defend + go to war for you, so it's a nice bonus not having to keep maintenance on basically a free army.

it's not perfect, but my typical start is I open up the tech tree and instantly go for the great library wonder, it gives me a free library and tech after building it so at the beginning it almost always gives me a big lead over the CPU if I beat them to it. (sometimes the CPU beats you by 1-2 turns building it...rage quit and start over, lol.)

If you feel like you aren't going to build a wonder fast enough (if it's been sitting their for a long time, the CPU probably has at least one civ attempting to build it.) it's a waste of production and better used on something else, like a worker or settler, or something.

last but not least, keep your happiness at 0 or above at all times, getting below that slows you to a crawl and it's a major pain to get out of, especially in the first 100 turns or so.

you might've known some of this and some of it might not be your style, but it's things I typically pay attention to.

(also, if you haven't turn on your resources in the bottom right corner, there is a little icon to open up what shows on screen, and resources is one of the checkmark boxes you can click) it makes a world of difference for me being able to see EXACTLY what resources are where.
 

TheRightToArmBears

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gmaverick019 said:
pro-tip at the beginning, take your warrior and find the nearest city state, "go to war" with them and steal their worker, then instantly make peace with them right afterwards, this won't net you any negative diplomacy with other civilizations and will grant you a free worker off the bat, this is a huge steal at the beginning considering the AI cheats as well, so fuck them and be cheap as well.
Oooh, I hadn't thought of doing that. Definitely getting my kidnap on next time.

I'm probably even worse at Civ, but what the hell. For diplomacy, horses are a great resource for trading because you'll most likely have an excess, and by about halfway through you'll have absolutely no use for them whatsoever anyway.

Spies are pretty handy as well- I usually put them in capitals to train them, then send them around city-states organising coups and generally keeping them sweet. If you're doing well enough economically and you have late-era numbers of spies, it's not too hard to keep a very large number of city-states as allies although it is a little tiresome shifting your spies around all the time. Still, it gives you immense power in the World Congress to push through whatever you like, and the bonuses they give you really add up


With war, I'm pretty passive. As you say, it's very expensive and I find it hampers your development so much, I leave it as late as I can- although that does mean your enemies can get pretty powerful, so that's the risk you take. I try and keep out of wars unless I'm doing significantly better than the opposing nation (use congress to impose trade embargoes on your enemies long before you go to war), especially technologically. Going to war with nations that can't match you technologically is so much easier, especially if you've got high-power siege units like rocket artillery, battleships or stealth bombers before them. Again, espionage (and counter-espionage. It's insanely irritating to have your enemies steal gunpowder from you just before you wanted to declare war) is really useful for keeping on top technologically.
 

Reasonable Atheist

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Look at all your cities to determine the highest natural production, and send a production trade route from
every one of your other cities to it. Win Game.
 

Prince of Ales

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I've had the most success going for Tradition rather than Liberty at the start. Then you stick with a small number of larger cities rather than having a large number of smaller cities. I know the game is set up in many ways to promote this kind of play: you get penalties for science and culture depending on how many cities you have. But then science happens to depend very heavily on population; at some point it's always going to become more optimal to expand, but it's tough to say when that point is, and it's a lot later than you'd probably think (later than previous games in the series for sure). Most games I've sat tight and been ahead on research all through the game, even when putting the difficulty up a few notches.

Latest game was on Emperor difficulty, and I managed to out-science the other civs through the mid game while sitting on only two cities (and the other civs "cheat" on higher difficulties by starting with free techs and gaining bonuses to science and production). I was only just outpacing them in that game though (I was well ahead of real life history however); I'd probably have been better off with a third or fourth city in that case, but again, I'm always unsure on the optimal rate of expansion. Plus, y'know, things go tits up sometimes, wars happen, and you can't always follow the optimal path.

Main thing is, if you're going for a small empire approach, then you need those cities big. Like I said, population means science. Anything with +Food can be thought of as a science building. So for instance, the Hanging Gardens wonder is actually really good for science. Also make sure to keep your citizens happy. When happiness is below zero, your growth suffers. Growth = science, so happiness = science. You tend to have fewer problems with happiness when your empire is small though.

That's just how I've been playing, and it seems to work.
 

Dalisclock

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I appreciate the advise. It sounds like I got a pretty good grasp on things based on the advice I got here, it just took me too long to figure it out. I didn't realize that founding academies and manufactories early was much more useful then speeding up research for one tech until way too late in the game.

Out of curiosity, is there an optimum time to pull people off food production and invest them in science and production? Later in the game, I started putting people into the windmills,schools and factory to boost their output but again, it wasn't until late game.

Also, how does setting the pace change the game? I notice it changes the needed production for projects but I'm not sure if it makes the game easier/harder.
 

Smiley Face

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Dalisclock said:
Also, how does setting the pace change the game? I notice it changes the needed production for projects but I'm not sure if it makes the game easier/harder.
By pace I assume you mean the speed settings i.e. Quick, Epic, Marathon, etc. It affects the costs of everything, from production, to science, to gold, to culture. The biggest relevant change there is that the longer the game gets, the more value you can gain from military units, because while everything else is slowing down, they are not. This means they take longer to go obsolete, eliminate barbarian encampments and ruins faster (the rewards from which are proportionately increased, and therefore much more tempting), and it is much easier to be militaristic in general, as your opponent's ability to train up a quick army in response to your declaration of war goes away.

Regarding difficulty levels, in case you didn't know, the way that they work is that once you increase the setting above 4 (Prince), rather than making the AI more competent or whatever, they just give them increased starting resources and passive bonuses. I really don't care for this, so I don't often play on those difficulties.

On the question of stopping food gathering and focusing on production, that depends on your playstyle. Personally, I just generally go for >0 population growth as a minimum, then assign all workers to the tiles with the greatest yields, counting non-food/production at decreased value, as those are the most important. At the end of the day, you want production, because production lets you build stuff that gives you everything else. Food-gathering gives you more production because it gives you more workers to do that with, and improves your science.

Also, regarding the advice about stealing a worker - you can do that, but it is risky, as offending one city state can impact your relations with all other city states, so you want to balance the value of stealing a single worker/conquering a single city, against the ability to take advantage of city states like everyone else.

My favourite anti-AI exploit is selling them luxury or strategic resources, particularly strategic ones. Siphoning their money away is economic warfare, and the best part is that, should they declare war on you with the new swordsmen they built with all that iron, they no longer have that iron once the deal ends upon the declaration of war, and their swordsmen fight at -50% combat strength. Luxury resources are handy to sell as well, particularly if a barbarian is about to pillage them, as once they do, the deal will end since you can no longer supply the good.
 

Itdoesthatsometimes

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Build the Forbidden Palace keep making non-offensive proposals that you do not care if they pass. So you can use your votes to go against what ever other stupid proposal the other civ made, and no one dislikes what you proposed. The world congress vote is only a factor when it goes against you, any other advantage it might bring is not worth pissing civ's off. Then again I turn off timed victory as a win option.

Move people when the bonuses start piling on-each specialist gains +2 science and such or if the town is never going get more than 4-5 population [cities I build as choke points or resource grabs].

Celts!!! Celts!!! Celts!!! Be the Celts.

I never have a victory condition in mind, I just pursue technologies. Often times victory conditions that I was not even considering present themselves. England gives me their second biggest city, because we are at war [even though I have not fought a single English unit] I trade that city away for favors and I become world leader instead of forth place in the space race with out aluminium.

Edit: Don't let anyone in your borders.
 

suitepee7

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Itdoesthatsometimes said:
Edit: Don't let anyone in your borders.
do you work for UKIP?

anyway, I'd be shit at this advice in general, I often turn off all victory types except military victory, because I like conquering planets with japanese space robots... anyway for military victory i recommend Germany for a massive gold saving, and prioritise science and technology so you end up artillery shelling pikemen (but invest heavily in spies to protect your secrets!) xD
 

Itdoesthatsometimes

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suitepee7 said:
Itdoesthatsometimes said:
Edit: Don't let anyone in your borders.
do you work for UKIP?

anyway, I'd be shit at this advice in general, I often turn off all victory types except military victory, because I like conquering planets with japanese space robots... anyway for military victory i recommend Germany for a massive gold saving, and prioritise science and technology so you end up artillery shelling pikemen (but invest heavily in spies to protect your secrets!) xD
I am half Mexican from the U.S. I don't think I am welcome in UKIP.
 

happyninja42

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Dalisclock said:
I founded a religion, but never got very good at spreading it or even making the majority of my citizens follow it. I maxed out Liberty, Aesthetics and Rationalism, with some progress made down the Freedom Ideology before the game ending. I built more then my share of wonders, managed to get two nearby city-states to back me most of the time, but I think my big problem was that I took too long to specialize, putting a lot of effort into culture as opposed to science. As a result, my tech progress was far behind the real world. I didn't get the apollo program in place until nearly 2000 and ran out of time for the time ending before I got all the spaceship parts researched and built. Granted, most of the other civs weren't doing any better, and I was in the lead for science by 1950, with even brazil falling behind(though Pedro had culture locked up and won the time victory on points, with me in 2nd place).
Yeah, you need to pick your path to victory early, and start specializing ASAP. Especially if you're going for a cultural victory. Science is pretty easy as long as you prioritize it.


Dalisclock said:
I also noticed that combat in this game seems a lot harder then Civ 2, at least as far as taking cities. Also, it seems quite easy to go broke fighting a war. I realize that's the point(Militaries are expensive), but still.... Maybe I needed to play a military oriented civ if I'm going to seriously wage wars. Maybe the problem was that that was my first playthrough and it just took me quite a while to figure out all the new mechanics. Maybe I should have knocked brazil out of the game early instead of being his friend for all of history.
Yes, if you're going to actually try and engage in war, you should focus on a war based culture. I've done 3 playthroughs, and never really fought anyone for any long period of time. It was usually one culture would toss insults at me, I'd hurl them back, they'd keep sending spies, I'd catch them, and if they persisted, I'd eventually attack. Usually by this point, the rest of the world hated them anyway. I found combat to be almost non existent though, most cultures leave you alone if you don't bug them. I just built about 2-3 units for each of my territory, and just let them sit there collecting a fat pension.



Dalisclock said:
Any suggestions from some of the civ 5 veterans here on how to better deal with the next play-through(other then play according to my civs strengths)? If I try for the science/space race victory again, what's a good strategy for setting myself up for that?
Just focus all your energy and production on +Science stuff. Depending on how many cities you have, I usually specialized them. I'd have one or two just focused on scientific output, and queued up every +Science thing I had. I'd keep 1 or 2 other cities focused on +Production, to help quickly develop Wonders and new technology requirements. Beyond that, focus on the ideologies that provide you with bonuses to +Science. Also, store up your Great Scientists, and use them once you start a long, new research project. This will help you leapfrog ahead of the other cultures. Try coastal cities, as there are ways to harness more +Science from the sea, with the right researches. Focus on trade routes that give +Science, and keep them constantly up and running. And then just keep people from stealing your tech and wait until you dominate the world through SCIENCE!!

Dalisclock said:
I will admit that I like what they've done with civ 5. The religion mechanic is interesting(especially founding one), as is culture, ideologies and social policies. I'm still trying to get a better handle on the diplomacy/world congress part.
Yeah the World Congress thing is tricky to get at first. The key to it is City-States, as they give you more votes. So, if you want to win by World Congress, focus on bonuses to City-States. My personal plan for a victory with that method, is the Single City model. This let's me keep 1 diplomat as an Anti-Spy, and then all the others you get for reaching the different Ages, can be sent out as delegates. Then you can engage in trades for votes. Also, to keep the city-states happy with you, the easiest way I found to maintain the Ally link with them, is Gifting them military units. Doesn't matter what kind of unit, any unit will do. So, churn out a steady supply of cheap, quick to train troops, and gift them out as often as needed. It will keep the city-states happy with you, which gets you more votes, which helps you maintain control of the congress. And, at some point in the World Congress stuff, the person with the most delegate votes, earns more votes for the next congress, simply for being #1 with votes. So if you can maintain that vote lead, you will always earn more, and you could potentially get enough votes yourself, to elect yourself World Leader. Barring that, with your diplomats out there in the great cultures, you can likely trade to get the few votes you still need. You might want to have a 2nd city, to simply churn out military units for my plan, and let your major city continue with the other productions you need.
 

Prince of Ales

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For Diplomatic victory, definitely look into the Freedom ideology. One of their capstones gives you favour every turn with any City State you have a trade route with. It's enough to make the per-turn difference positive, even without any quests, gifts, bribes or spies. Over time, there's basically no way any other player can out-favour you, unless they're following the same ideology and have the same perk (and I've never seen the AI use this intelligently). If you're on a smaller map you can have every city-state on your side solely by means of trade routes.