Civilization 5!!!

[Kizyr]

EDIT: There's an achievement called "Montezuma's Revenge". Heh. Ew. Heh.
EDIT: There must be something wrong. "Magellan: Prove that the world is round by uncovering a connected loop of tiles around the circumference of the world." It says nobody has done this. It's not possible that NOBODY'S circumnavigated the globe yet.

It's also possible that there are many others who, like myself, prefer to turn the internet off on startup to play on offline mode. When I want to play online, I'll play online. When I want to play Civ, I don't care about playing online--it's a strategy game, not an MMO, and the achievements don't mean anything to me.

Not a dig at you, by the way. It's more a dig at this whole push to force everyone to play online rather than giving us the option. I don't like having to connect when I bloody don't want to connect, and I don't like having to manually disconnect from the internet to start in offline mode.

Actually it's my one major gripe with the game. The strategy I'm warming up to, the changes are interesting (I think I'm cool with maybe 80% of them), and the interface is easy to navigate. But, I hate programs that don't give you the option of installing how and where you want it, programs that force you to use some external client (like Steam), and programs that force you to be online at any point. In fact, if I'd known about those difficulties, I wouldn't have bought Civ5 yet and waited a few months when I had more time (or in hopes of a streamlined, 'offline-friendly' version). KF

[Vaniver]

EDIT: There must be something wrong. "Magellan: Prove that the world is round by uncovering a connected loop of tiles around the circumference of the world." It says nobody has done this. It's not possible that NOBODY'S circumnavigated the globe yet.

I believe Magellan is bugged- I've definitely got the "you've circumnavigated the globe! All your naval units move faster!" message in game but not the achievement.

[SlyReaper]

Eh? That makes them move faster? I did not know that.

[bigglesworth]

It did in Civ 4 too.

[SlyReaper]

Does that include embarked land units? (I realise there was no such thing in Civ4)

[Vaniver]

Does that include embarked land units? (I realise there was no such thing in Civ4)

I believe so; I'm not sure though. It may be military units only.

[ArgonV]

I believe Magellan is bugged- I've definitely got the "you've circumnavigated the globe! All your naval units move faster!" message in game but not the achievement.

Huh? I've circumnavigated the globe, but haven't got a message about it...

[iop]

I believe Magellan is bugged- I've definitely got the "you've circumnavigated the globe! All your naval units move faster!" message in game but not the achievement.

Huh? I've circumnavigated the globe, but haven't got a message about it...

You might have been beaten to it by someone else.

[Jessica]

You only get the benefit if you're the first in your game to do it. I'm glad that benefit is still around though. In my current game (aztecs on difficulty 2) I didn't even worry about ships until I dealt with my current continent.

I'm going to beat it, not sure how but I'll win. I just wanted to get a handle of how the game worked before going up in difficult. Of course, I've never been good at it, and we'll see if I can win at higher difficulty ratings.

Also I'm really enjoying the game! I'm really liking how where you are on the map really impacts combat. That was nice. I mean, it was always useful to be in rough terrain when attacking but now it's so much more.

Also, I can't see the use for forts (or their super upgrade citadels). In almost any instance I'd rather have an improvement, and if it's outside of my borders, why would I risk the worker?

[Vaniver]

Also, I can't see the use for forts (or their super upgrade citadels). In almost any instance I'd rather have an improvement, and if it's outside of my borders, why would I risk the worker?

If you're playing on an Earth map, there are places where it seems useful. My first game I was in Africa, and had a citadel on the hex between Egypt and Arabia.

But... if I had pushed my early advantage against the Iroquois who lived in Arabia, I could have taken their cities and had them as a buffer instead, where there wouldn't be a good spot for a citadel. And if you're playing a continents or island game where invasions will come from the sea instead of from land, then there's even less reason to build a citadel.

But there are times when it seems useful- if you're trying to prevent your capital from being taken, or you have multiple great generals near an invasion force using one of them to make a citadel to turn the time seems like it would be useful. But I strongly agree that planting them ahead of time seems like a giant waste.


I wish great person points were tracked separately. It's really difficult to get a Great Engineer- the first building that produces them is a Workshop, and so you pretty much have to only build Great Engineer wonders and ignore scientists and artists and such in at least one city for quite some time (and if you want multiple, you should ignore them in all cities). But they also seem the most useful- +3 production in a square is awesome. +4 culture is also nice, but primarily if you're going for a culture victory, I think.

[iop]

I wish great person points were tracked separately. It's really difficult to get a Great Engineer- the first building that produces them is a Workshop, and so you pretty much have to only build Great Engineer wonders and ignore scientists and artists and such in at least one city for quite some time (and if you want multiple, you should ignore them in all cities). But they also seem the most useful- +3 production in a square is awesome. +4 culture is also nice, but primarily if you're going for a culture victory, I think.

I agree. Great Engineers make awesome improvements.

I have only ever built once citadel - to defend against an aggressive city-state that I didn't really want to bother with. Otherwise, Great Generals are so much more useful to support combat troops, or to start golden ages. I wouldn't built citadels (or forts) ahead of time either, unless I was going into turtle mode and had a nice choke point somewhere (which reminds me that I really look forward to an Erebus-like map script, where there really were places for building forts.

[Diadem]

EDIT: There must be something wrong. "Magellan: Prove that the world is round by uncovering a connected loop of tiles around the circumference of the world." It says nobody has done this. It's not possible that NOBODY'S circumnavigated the globe yet.

I believe Magellan is bugged- I've definitely got the "you've circumnavigated the globe! All your naval units move faster!" message in game but not the achievement.

When did you get it? Since the last patch?

The Magellan achievement, but also the circumnavigation bonus itself, were disabled in the xml initially. You should not have been able to get either. Noone else has. Unless they enabled it in the latest patch and you got it since?

[CombustibleLemons]

Don't save your game during the computers turn. I have done this twice and when I load the games I get the game but the please wait is surrounded in black and nothing happens

[Vaniver]

When did you get it? Since the last patch?

The Magellan achievement, but also the circumnavigation bonus itself, were disabled in the xml initially. You should not have been able to get either. Noone else has. Unless they enabled it in the latest patch and you got it since?

I believe it was before the latest patch, but am unsure. I distinctly remember it occurring but am aware of the fallibility of human memory and have no strong idea of when it occurred.

[Vaniver]

Doubleposting to bump:

So, I've been trying out a coastal strategy. Merchant Navy seems pretty damn awesome, and playing on archipelago maps helps my desire to not have to deal with fighting the computer much. The problem I'm running into is that the strategy seems to contradict itself, which is bothersome.

Actually, I think the problem I'm running into is that Liberty sucks. With Commerce, it's 3 policies to get +3 production in all coastal cities. Order requires 4 policies to get +5 production in all cities. Liberty requires 3 policies... to get +1 production in every city.

So I think the plan goes like this: rush Calendar, build Stonehenge, rush Theology, get Merchant Navy, rush Biology, get Communism, then start exploding. Every city you plant will have +8 production initially, which means that you can drop them anywhere and they'll still be moderately useful, even if it's a rock in the middle of the ocean.

It is interesting/bothersome how much policy-heavy strategies require only having one city for pretty much all of the early game, because otherwise your policy growth crawls to a halt while you build culture stuff everywhere, and how much Stonehenge helps. On ocean-heavy maps, the AI tend to beeline the Great Lighthouse, which is understandable- but I think you're so much better off with Stonehenge. Which is sort of a giant warning sign that that wonder is probably way too good.


But it's not clear to me that strategy is better than just going a single tech-heavy city, and then expanding once you've gotten the policies you want. Ocean hexes are actually pretty bad- if you build a lighthouse, they're all the equivalent of unmodified grassland river squares. Which I suppose is great for generating cash, particularly if you get a number of Golden Ages, but seems pretty terrible in the grand scheme of things. Even the extra 3 production from Merchant Navy doesn't seem worth giving up all of those hexes.

I tend to play games on Legendary Start for resources, and one of the recent ones I started I had 3 whales and 1 fish within range of my capital- which made seaport awesome (+8 production from one building? Don't mind if I do!)- but as far as I can tell that is atypical.

[iop]

Liberty is really only useful if you want to REX early. Otherwise, the benefits just don't compare to what you can get from the later SP trees.

I just won my first culture victory, where I completed Piety, Patronage, Commerce, Freedom, and Order. All my three cities were coastal (and river), which was a lot of fun. If you are allied with a few maritime city states, you can found a city anywhere, and they'll pop almost every turn initially, while spitting out lots of buildings.

Since cities rarely reach size 20 (at least in my games so far), and since at least some of your population will be working as specialists, giving up lots of tiles is not a big problem, as long as you get a handful of good tiles to work with. If you can settle on a river near 2 fish, you're going to have a pretty amazing city - at the latest once you get seaport and hydro plant online. Also, since decent base production is pretty hard to get, +3 makes quite a difference, and the two prereqs are reasonably useful in their own right.

[Jessica]

I was finding liberty to be useful early game. Pretty much just to help jump start my civ. Getting the extra production (while small) is useful for early game cities, and the extra culture is really nice. Making sure that every city of the bat has some culture to expand seems really good.

I still haven't finished a game. But, that's because of my current sporadic gaming habits. But, I must say there are some really awesome civ bonuses. Aztec's killing bonus? Nice... also the benefit of the french to get +2 culture in every city before steam power? So nice... Others? Kind of crappy... specifically the German one. Getting extra "brutes" for killing barbarians just doesn't seem useful.

but, I'm also a terrible civ player...

[SlyReaper]

I quite liked playing the Germans. The captured brutes made good cannon fodder.

[Vaniver]

Liberty is really only useful if you want to REX early.

Is it even the best choice for that? I think you might be better off with Honor and taking stuff from other people (though I suppose there are significant happiness costs there).

I was finding liberty to be useful early game. Pretty much just to help jump start my civ. Getting the extra production (while small) is useful for early game cities, and the extra culture is really nice. Making sure that every city of the bat has some culture to expand seems really good.

I agree that the extra culture looks really useful, and even the +happiness can be nice. But the problem is that's a separate tree from the +production one, so you're look at 5 policies to get both of them.

Others? Kind of crappy... specifically the German one. Getting extra "brutes" for killing barbarians just doesn't seem useful.

Combined with some Honor policies, that has you set up for a really nice early rush, I think. The bonus gold also makes them easier to upgrade, once you have the ability to do that (assuming they can be upgraded).

The thing I'm noticing about them is that some special abilities are much more specialized than others, and they feed different victory conditions in very different ways. If you're going for a science victory, I suspect that Babylon is the best. (I think the other contenders are India, whose happiness boost doesn't seem significant enough, but might be when you combine it with secularism, and Siam and Greece, for the additional food from maritime city states / policies from culture city states.) If you're going for an early rush, Germany or Japan both seem strong (but Japan has the benefit of its ability always being useful).

But then there are ones like England- +2 naval movement. Well, that's rather useful on a map with a lot of water, but it's not clear that will actually help you win the game sooner. You explore faster, and your ships can flee from enemy ships successfully, but it doesn't seem to help with building your economy, winning battles, or invading people.

[Kizyr]

So... Siam declares war on me. I'm in the industrial era, starting to use infantry to garrison my cities and as the core of my army; Siam is still running about with longswordsmen and catapults. He surrounds one of my cities (with an infantry garrison) with 2 catapults and 2 longswordsmen, and takes it in one turn, then he does the same with another city in a few turns. Not to mention that his elephant units are impossible to take down with anything weaker than infantry (riflemen, cavalry especially, etc.).

Civ V looks like it has even worse of the "potato in the tailpipe" problem. There's such a ridiculous advantage given to attackers of a city (whereas in Civ4 it was kind of the reverse) and certain units like elephants. Now I'm basically using dozens of infantry units plus artillery to wipe them off the face of the map, but still, it's rather irritating that technology doesn't seem to mean very much when you're conquering cities. The only reason I'm winning now is because I've taken all their iron and ivory resources and the only thing they have to defend themselves with are pikemen. KF

[headprogrammingczar]

I never had that problem with Civ II.. :(

[OmenPigeon]

Yeah, city defense is kind of wonky. When you have a unit in a city and someone attacks the city, they actually attack the city itself, not the unit. And when they defeat the city, the unit is automatically destroyed as well. This means that the only units worth garrisoning in cites are ranged/siege units, since it improves their melee defense and they can make ranged attacks to support the city bombardment.

Elephants are pretty baller (see this thread for some more griping about them: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=389909). 22 strength puts them right between longswordsmen and riflemen, so it's not surprising that you need infantry to fight them effectively.

I just played a game starting in the industrial era to play around with the end game units without needing to actually spend time researching all that tech. End game combat is really quite different from the early game. In the beginning it's all about unit placement; if you can get your units up on hills and stick the opponent on desert or something you have a strong advantage. And taking cities is about getting a siege unit or two in range (which puts them in range of the city) and banging on it with that and a melee unit or two until you can grab it. Once you start getting air units, battleships and cruise missiles it's completely different. Combat was all about using mech infantry to clear out anti-air guns, then using planes, ships and missiles to wipe out any potential unit threats and send cities down to 1 health so that I could roll in with whatever units I had handy.

Does anyone else find the unit upgrade tree a little odd? Every ground unit in the early game upgrades to riflemen, which end up as mechanized infantry. Mounted units upgrade to cavalry and then stop. Their speed and strength makes them very good in the beginning, but once you tech past cavalry they're done and all those promotions you gave them are useless. And means that you can never again get a unit that can move after attacking. This makes tanks and helicopters (the usual upgrade targets for dudes on horses) significantly less useful than they might be if you were aggressive for a long time before you get to the modern era. Also, bombers don't upgrade to stealth bombers, which *has* to be a bug. There are also some quirks with upgrading: units keep all their bonuses *and* penalties when you upgrade, so if you get scouts promoted to archers by a goody hut they can ignore terrain movement penalties, great. But if you throw down some cash to turn your artillery into rocket artillery they keep their requirement to set up before firing, which negates *the entire point of rocket artillery*.

[Zalzidrax]

Ruins turn cavalry into tanks if you get the weapon upgrade one. (Don't ask me how you find functional 5000+ year old tanks abandoned in a ruin). Of course this only usually happens on archipelago maps where the AI doesn't bother to send land units to a place unless they're going to invade or settle it.

[Vaniver]

My major qualm (besides the garrisoned unit poofing*) with city defense is that it all hinges on melee units. If they have ten artillery shelling your city every turn, but you manage to kill any melee unit that gets close to your city, you can hold the city forever with no serious problems (shouldn't they be ruining buildings or destroying wonders?). Currently, taking a city with infantry results in massive building losses, but shelling doesn't. That strikes me as reversed.

I'm also bothered that, as far as I can tell, the best strategy for dealing with city-states is to let other people conquer them, then liberate them (hey, free benefits for life!). Indeed, a good strategy against the AI is rushing renaissance though acoustics (or even industrial through biology), going back and getting riflemen and artillery, and then engaging on a massive campaign to wipe out other whoever has done the most conquest. You can have a diplomatic victory lined up as soon as you get access to the United Nations, especially since you can generally buy city-states as allies for 500 gold (thus ensuring they vote for you).

It may be this only works on lower difficulty settings (I won with it easily on 5), since at higher difficulty settings the AI will have enough of a tech boost that you can't get an edge that way- but it seems like you could do a similar strategy with just rushing the lower half of the tech tree. You'd probably still pick up Stonehenge (I really think they made that too good) for all of the extra policies, a library, and maybe a university- but it's hard to overestimate just how awesome artillery is.

*This really aggravates me when you take an enemy city with your great melee unit, and the city is now at half health and low strength- they send in units and take the low-strength city back, ignoring your great unit that could have murdered them all, and your unit poofs.


Civ4 had a decent system to ensure that you couldn't go city crazy, though its gold system was pretty poor. Civ 5 has a better gold system (it's actually useful now, for lots of different things!) but I find myself really bothered by the drawbacks of city growth. Increased gold costs and happiness costs I understand- you have to pick between more cities you directly control and the myriad other benefits accessible by gold, and you need to put cities in valuable places. But increased Great Person costs and policy costs I don't understand. I suppose the Great People one makes a bit of game sense- you have to choose between superimprovements around one city or normal improvements around many cities- but makes no sense from a flavor perspective. And the policy costs make it so you build one super city, get great policies, and then go on a campaign of global domination. Why build a bunch of cities and then get Communism to make them useful when you could get Communism and then take a bunch of cities that now become useful under your enlightened leadership?

And the national wonders are also odd. The system in Civ 4 was sensible: you needed 3 temples to make a cathedral, or 6 universities to make Oxford, and so on. It was problematic that you needed to turn on the single city challenge to get rid of that requirement (I don't want to have to build 8 cities on a huge map if I'm playing the Earth with 18 civs scenario, thank you very much), but it was an option. The system in Civ 5 actively discourages you from building more cities or annexing puppets. Building a library in every city is reasonable, and actually a cool thing to push. Building a museum in every city is pretty much impossible. But while the National College is a respectable +50% tech, the Hermitage is a massive +100% culture- the maximum tech% you can get is 300%, I believe (library+university+national college+observatory+research lab+public school; might be 350%, or I may be misremembering whether or not a research lab exists); the maximum culture% is the same, but from only three sources (constitution+hermitage+broadcast tower), and so to have one of those sources hinge on having a 3rd tier (temple-> opera house-> museum) culture building pretty much limits you to a small empire (probably just one city).

It just seems like, except for production, each city costs you more than it gets you. The production might be worth it- production is great, after all- but cities pretty much need to be by a luxury resource to break even on happiness, and need to specialize culture to keep your policy rate the same, and need to specialize in great people to keep your GP rate the same, and so on. In every game I've played, a single city seems like it can accomplish all tasks reasonably well, and a multiple city empire makes huge sacrifices to get moderately better at one of the things it does.


Note that I do generally play on Legendary Start for resources- things like Iron are important enough that it might be worth additional cities to grab them. But citystates give you a way to do that with exploration and gold- and so it's entirely unclear to me that there's really anything you need a second city for besides pumping out military units.

[SlyReaper]

Well extra cities give you extra science and gold, which I'm fairly sure don't get nerfed with more cities. I know on single-city challenges, I usually end up with my population ecstatically happy, gettings loads of culture policies, but my treasury can barely support 2 or 3 military units. Also, it's difficult to stay ahead of other civs in the tech tree.

[ArgonV]

Well, and multiple cities = multiple wonders at the same time.

[Diadem]

I actually think OCC was easier in civ4 than in civ5. It is a lot harder to build wonders now, and you can't add GPs to your city anymore for insane bonusses. No more free hammers and science. That really hurts. And since science is now population based that's a lot harder to get too. Though city states make for interesting bonusses.

But you'll be really low on hammers for the entire game.

[Vaniver]

I actually think OCC was easier in civ4 than in civ5. It is a lot harder to build wonders now, and you can't add GPs to your city anymore for insane bonusses. No more free hammers and science. That really hurts. And since science is now population based that's a lot harder to get too. Though city states make for interesting bonusses.

But you'll be really low on hammers for the entire game.

This is true. But I haven't had any trouble outteching the AI, or building early wonders- though this could very well be because the AI doesn't plan ahead as well as I do. I haven't done any sort of turn-by-turn comparison of different games I've been playing, and so it's hard to comment authoritatively on the strategic value of different plans.

The bonus from extra cities due to science can be significant- particularly if you're building science buildings throughout your empire- but I've found that a single city focused on tech can pretty easily get massive amounts of science. The multipliers from buildings are really significant- and so while you can get additional science from other cities, I'm not sure it makes a big difference.

Also note that a great way to tech in CiV is to sacrifice great scientists on the altar of knowledge- boom, instantly acquire the most expensive tech available to you. That is significantly slowed down by having multiple cities.

Remember that your cities have different GP pools but the same GP threshold. So if the cost of GPs doubles every time, say, and one city has GP growth of 5 while the other has GP growth of 2, only the first city will produce GPs. If they're more balanced- one produces 6 while the other produces 4- then both will produce, but the one with 6 will produce twice as frequently as the one with 4.

Of course, this all depends on the actual numbers- I suspect building a city increases the GP cost comparably to getting a GP, and if so each other city you build is a great scientist you don't, but if it's much lower then the math is different. But it should be clear that even if additional cities didn't increase the GP cost, you need massive investment in them to make them produce a single GP over the course of a game, assuming your capital is designed to pump out GPs.

[iop]

One of the design goals was to make it possible to be competitive with only few cities, so it's no wonder that you don't absolutely need a large empire.

A large empire is obviously better in terms of total hammers, but due to the exponential increase in the amount of food required to grow (and the per-city benefit from maritime city states), you can reach a much larger population with a large empire. While a science-city helps compete somewhat, more population backed by libraries and universities will tech faster, and since more tiles can be worked, it will make more money and benefit more massively from a golden age.

With GPs and SPs, smaller is better, though even for culture, you are not very far behind if your large number of cities have all culture buildings (though I still doubt you could compete with my Egyptian 3-city civ with which I got my cultural victory where each city had at least one wonder thanks to GE's, and the +100% cpt from the freedom tree).

My major qualm with the game so far is the sad state of the AI. I just started a game on King, where I beelined steel (GL for Metal Casting, GS for Steel), and I've just cleared my continent with longswordmen while the others were still fielding warriors, spearmen and archers. Now I hurry toward astronomy to find and take out the other capitals (also, I really need to find other AIs to boost my income: I trade away all the luxury and strategic resources I can spare for gold, which allows me to simply buy units and city states). Even with evenly matched tech, it's still too easy to out-fight the AI, btw.

[Vaniver]

Just lost a game where I was shooting for single-city tech. Difficulty 6 Pangaea- I figured that since that's the only map the AI really knows how to win on, the others wouldn't be a fair test. Went for Small because that made it more likely I would get the wonders I wanted, picked Babylon because I was going GS heavy. AI were America, Songhai, and Greece.

Did fine early game- got every wonder I wanted (though none of the AI seemed to be the wonder-building type), but the city-state selection near me was poor. A hostile Cultural city and a friendly Militaristic city; culture would have been useful for the policies, but wasn't worth paying double for. Made friends with Greece and Songhai, signed pacts of secrecy with both against America. The game progressed- eventually I became allies with a friendly maritime city halfway across the map, but didn't get any Patronage policies.

America was expanding, though- first it reduced Songhai to its capital city and a narrow, worthless peninsula, then it turned on Greece. America hit the modern era a few turns before I did, but I don't know how our tech totals actually compared. I launched a weak invasion of a cannon and two riflemen to try and take back my maritime ally that America had gobbled up, but that failed- I didn't have the visual range to use the cannon effectively and his minutemen were able to take down my riflemen. I built an artillery or two to help Greece defend, but that wasn't enough.

I could retool to building military units easily- it took only a turn apiece to build the barracks, armory, and Heroic Epic, but then it took 4-6 turns for each unit. My artillery could kill a unit a turn, but even with two of them his units were showing up on my borders faster than I could kill them, and the tanks and infantry I built didn't seem to last all that long. I was able to make a brief push into formerly Greek territory and take a city, but I couldn't defend it, and it was overall a loss on my part due to the units that got killed.

I think I might have been better off turtling- trying to make infantry just as a wall for my artillery, putting out several artillery, and using one of my Great Generals to make a citadel along the main approach to Babylon. I didn't have a chokepoint, so he could just maneuver around into the forests and jungles, but that would have slowed him down significantly and let my artillery do their work.

It seems like the small map may have been the problem- generally, expansive, militaristic AIs (even if their cities surround me) tend to go for other AIs first, and America didn't invade me until ~225 turns into game I probably could have won in 300. If there was another AI he had to eat up first, I might have won- but that's assuming that, when you start winning, they don't notice and destroy you. The cultural victory seems like the one that's easiest to surprise people with (though if they've been taking out AIs and not citystates you can do the diplomatic one too), but even then it's possible to stop. The science one seems almost impossible to surprise people with.

The other problem with the single-city strategy is how dependent you are on strategic resources being around your capital. You can ameliorate this some with city-states, but they're not that reliable. I had iron and oil, which was nice, but didn't have coal, aluminum, or uranium- I researched atomic theory in case, since it seemed like nuclear weapons would have been potent against America, but was out of luck.


So, it does seem like multiple cities is a good plan, and also that exploding when you have a tech edge is a good plan. I'm somewhat bothered by how the tech tree has a bottleneck at Steam Power; it makes sense (it's hard to have industrialization without steam) but it means that you're very limited in how deep you can rush into the tree. You have to research everything before Steam Power at some point, and so the question is just which things to get first.

I think my list, at present, looks like this:
1. Calendar
2. Writing
3. Acoustics (assuming philosophy->education->acoustics)
4. Masonry (if you have marble; generally will be gotten before acoustics because you'd research this and GS that)
Then... it's not clear. The main useful techs seem to be Civil Service (+1 food on every river farm is rather nice), Currency (for the market), Metal Casting for the workshop, Gunpowder->Rifling for the units, and the Astronomy->Biology tree has a number of nice things. I think Civil Service is probably the first target, there, but then don't really know what to do. During games I sort of do it haphazardly, which seems definitely subpar.

[Jessica]

I tried looking this up in the civlopedia, but I couldn't find any info. What do pacts of secrecy do? I generally join them because I haven't seen a downside to it, and agreeing to the AI makes them happy. So, what do they even do?

Also, in the past couple games I've been playing, I'm finding that money is a real problem for me. Sometimes it works great, and I have no problems, but then something happens (and usually I don't know what sets it off) but I go from +30 to +2 then -30 usually in as little as 5 turns. Not sure why.

[iop]

Also, in the past couple games I've been playing, I'm finding that money is a real problem for me. Sometimes it works great, and I have no problems, but then something happens (and usually I don't know what sets it off) but I go from +30 to +2 then -30 usually in as little as 5 turns. Not sure why.

Do you have puppets who are building useless stuff (where you haven't turned every tile into a trading post)? Are your workers automated and start building railroads, or converting trading posts to other improvements? Are you building lots of units? Did a golden age just end? These are the things that may cost a lot of money (and that's why I don't automate workers anymore).

Also, are you selling all the luxury and strategic resources you can?

It seems like the small map may have been the problem- generally, expansive, militaristic AIs (even if their cities surround me) tend to go for other AIs first, and America didn't invade me until ~225 turns into game I probably could have won in 300. If there was another AI he had to eat up first, I might have won- but that's assuming that, when you start winning, they don't notice and destroy you. The cultural victory seems like the one that's easiest to surprise people with (though if they've been taking out AIs and not citystates you can do the diplomatic one too), but even then it's possible to stop. The science one seems almost impossible to surprise people with.

Maybe I have not played on a high enough level so far, but in my experience, the AI has never ever tried to prevent me from winning.

Also, you could have used the militaristic city state for providing your units with experience. In my recent game, I stole a worker from nearby Almaty (worker stealing is nice to get a fast start), and never made peace. Then, I simply fortified a warrior on a hill in my own territory and had the city state fire on it - 2xp/turn early on, 4xp with Military Tradition. When it was time to upgrade to longswordmen, I had already a unit with Shock 1-3, Blitz, March, and Medic. Such units upgrade into extremely tough riflemen.

Which trees did you go for, by the way? I did my three-city cultural victory with Piety, Patronage, Order, Freedom, and Commerce, though I guess for an OCC on a higher level I'd swap order and Commerce for Tradition and Honor.

As for stuff to get: You may want to get Theology for Angkor Wat and more land, civil service for Chichen and the food (if you're on a river), and printing press for the Taj Mahal. Potentially, you might find the Great Wall useful for defense, so construction could move up on the list. Afterward, you obviously want to have broadcast towers as soon as possible.

[Jessica]

What do you mean selling all my luxury resources?

Usually it's not the puppets that do it for me. I usually have one or two automated workers, and only when I get bored of doing it for them. Or when I don't realize where I can actually improve anymore. But it's true, they should probably never be automated. Yeah, golden ages ending does drop the gold production. Oh well.

I just don't like feeling like in early turns, or even middle ages that I shouldn't be building structures in my cities, because I'm worried about their maintenance...

[iop]

What do you mean selling all my luxury resources?

Admittedly, this works better the higher the level, but basically, as soon as I get my first luxury resource online (which is usually as soon as I research the necessary technology, because I try to settle on a resource), I contact the civ with the most gold and sell the luxury. They might not want to do a trade if they think the luxury should be worth more, but if you "propose", they'll take the deal. That's how you sell cities to them for all their gold, btw. Note that they won't give you more than 10 gold per turn for luxuries - though that's still a pretty sweet deal.

As long as I don't have many cities, I don't actually need any luxury resources, and the happiness golden age is anyway not that useful early on when you only have very few small cities, so these resources are much better used for gold - all you need is keep your happiness above 0. Same thing goes for excess strategic resources, by the way.

[Jessica]

Huh.

I would never have thought about doing that. I'll have to give that some thought during my next game. I think I should give up this current game I'm on because it really isn't going well (both gold and happiness are hovering between -3 and +3, and I have like no military to speak of.)

thanks for the tip!

[iop]

Also, unless you're using a terrain balance mod, there are really only three improvements you need: farms along the river (even on hills), lumbermills on forest, and trading posts everywhere else. This should ensure you have enough gold, and nice large cities which have enough food to afford specialists.

[Vaniver]

I tried looking this up in the civlopedia, but I couldn't find any info. What do pacts of secrecy do? I generally join them because I haven't seen a downside to it, and agreeing to the AI makes them happy. So, what do they even do?

My understanding is they cause the AI to hate each other more, and also maybe make that AI hate you more. The primary use seems to be pitting AI against each other.

Also, in the past couple games I've been playing, I'm finding that money is a real problem for me. Sometimes it works great, and I have no problems, but then something happens (and usually I don't know what sets it off) but I go from +30 to +2 then -30 usually in as little as 5 turns. Not sure why.

Golden ages generally cause a massive increase in gold production. Remember, every square that gives you at least 1 gold gives you an additional gold- and so if you're working a bunch of river squares, they all just doubled in value. And so if you were at, say, +30-30=0 before the golden age and then +60-30=+30 during the golden age, you'll drop back to 0 after the golden age.

Building maintenance, unit maintenance, and road maintenance all add up quickly, but additional gold is fairly hard to get once you've expanded onto all the luxury resources in your territory- so building new expenses without building new revenue can cause your income to drop, especially if you were budgeting on a golden age continuing indefinitely.


Also- iop, thanks for the resource-selling tip. I did it this last game, and it made all the extra incense I was sitting on massively more useful.

Maybe I have not played on a high enough level so far, but in my experience, the AI has never ever tried to prevent me from winning.

I want to say I've had a war declared on me late-game when I was beginning to assemble my victory condition. Whether or not that was a normal war I do not know, and I have generally run small militaries such that the AI might just be trying to gobble me up.

I do hear, though, that the AI is really bad at trying to win. Which is a giant shame, because essentially all you have to do is not lose- and if you're on an ocean map of any sort, that's trivial.

Also, you could have used the militaristic city state for providing your units with experience. In my recent game, I stole a worker from nearby Almaty (worker stealing is nice to get a fast start), and never made peace. Then, I simply fortified a warrior on a hill in my own territory and had the city state fire on it - 2xp/turn early on, 4xp with Military Tradition.

That is a fantastic idea: I've toyed with the idea of continuously generating experience from something, but I never thought to do it with a city-state, and stealing a worker early on just makes it all the better.

Which trees did you go for, by the way? I did my three-city cultural victory with Piety, Patronage, Order, Freedom, and Commerce, though I guess for an OCC on a higher level I'd swap order and Commerce for Tradition and Honor.

I generally get Tradition for Aristocracy, at least, then Freedom, then Rationalism (to Secularism), then Order (to Communism). If there are useful city-states nearby, I generally get a bunch of Patronage after snatching Constitution.

For my cultural victory, I think I went Tradition, Piety, Patronage, Freedom, and Order, maybe with Rationalism replacing Patronage.

As for stuff to get: You may want to get Theology for Angkor Wat and more land, civil service for Chichen and the food (if you're on a river), and printing press for the Taj Mahal. Potentially, you might find the Great Wall useful for defense, so construction could move up on the list. Afterward, you obviously want to have broadcast towers as soon as possible.

Angkor Wat is on the way to Acoustics, and I normally pick it up. Growing at 4x speed is nice. I haven't been terribly impressed with either Chichen Itza or the Taj Mahal (though normally I try to pick them up), though I suppose I might be better off using the GP to keep myself in near-perpetual golden ages. Darius seems like he's optimized for that- that is one of the things that I do like about the leader balancing, though, is that there are so many leaders who you look at and say "well, I'm not sure whether Greece or Siam would do this better," and I'm not sure if Persia or Babylon would be better for trying continuous golden ages.

Also, unless you're using a terrain balance mod, there are really only three improvements you need: farms along the river (even on hills), lumbermills on forest, and trading posts everywhere else. This should ensure you have enough gold, and nice large cities which have enough food to afford specialists.

Yeah- I can't think of a time that you would ever be better off with a mine someplace, since 2 food or 1 production is a pretty easy choice.

[Jessica]

Huh.

Wow, I'm totally not understanding the game then. I build mines on all hills, beside rivers or not. then usually farms beside rivers, and if I'm really desperate some outside rivers. Then random camps...

Good to know. So, food > production? Really? Because in most civ games, I've always felt hammers/shields were generally better than 2 food. I'll have to rethink my strategy... that's a big one.

[Spambot5546]

I always just build what the little pop-up suggests.

[ArgonV]

I always just build what the little pop-up suggests.

I don't. I also don't get where the pop up bases it's information on. I once had a 8 population city, with little in the way of production or gold, but plenty of food. The damn advisor kept telling me to build farms...