My game play is broken. Can I get some advice?

[denali1]

Mornin',

I need some advice. I love playing Civ and have been playing since the beginning. I am, by no means, an expert. I've never played on Diety level or any level even close. I'm just not that good at the game.

I usually play on Warlord level and I win regularly. So I decided to up my game and play on the Prince level. I lost, but I'm not sure how I lost.

I always play the Celts and I usually go for a non-violent win (cultural, space, etc). However, I'm running into a situation where, late in the game, one of the computer controlled civs will go into what I can only describe as turbo boost and starts gaining points like mad. This last game, Austria beat me by 500 points and I'm not entirely sure why.

I have Civ V, BNW and G&K. I play on the Earth map (although I'm disappointed that they only have a single, tiny mountain as the Appalachian mountains) with usually 6-8 Civs.

I'm not sure what information to provide, but I'm willing to answer any questions you have and I'm willing to take any advice offered. Thanks for reading.

denali1

 

[Anthem4]

I personally despise the Celts as their bonus means you cannot develop tiles, and you have to get lucky on your start for the bonus to even work. This can help in the early game to get the correct religious bonuses you want, though. For example, if you were able to get tithe you could bribe other civs to attack Austria or whomever throughout the game.

Or you could get one of the building perks that gives +culture, +faith etc and build/conquer cities thus building up your culture.

My first bit of advice though is to try out a different civ.

Make sure you are going to citizen management in cities
Make sure you are scouting
Make sure you are trading and working on diplomacy
Sign research agreements
It should be relatively easy to wonder whore for culture at this level as well.


Like you said, hard to give specifics without a lot of info.

 

[reddishrecue]

Ais can get all the points they could get but points don't always matter when you're going for a science diplomatic or cultural victory. Take a look at the victory screen and you will see more information about who is who in victory. You will also know who is closer and who is farther to victory. You can still win with less score though. Only time you win with more score is when the time reaches 2050.

 

[Averylongname]

It's hard to give advice on everything, so I'd suggest you to watch some lets play on youtube to learn how to play, at least that's how I learn to play this game. My favorite one is Marbozir, though he is not the best player, he explains things and is more entertaining plus is a good enough player.
Also, try to play with different civs and different game setting. It'd be fun

 

[mbbcam]

When I first started playing the game I was mystified as to why one civ -- usually around turn 160 or thereabouts -- would explode and start running away with the game. I eventually realised that often one civ will be focused on culture and will build every wonder it can (the points system seems to be badly skewed towards giving points for wonders) or else there will be an expansionist civ that will start spamming cities on every scrap of land on the map -- even single tile islands. Once again, you seem to get points for the amount of land you control and the size of your population. What it took me a while to realise is that these civs may be quite weak in other ways. Lots of small cities may be quite vulnerable to conquest, for example. The war may take quite a long time, but you can wear down the "runaway" civ, especially if you have city state allies.

In the end, I disabled Time as a victory condition and began ignoring the points as I thought the scoring system was too skewed towards wonders. I began playing for a Diplomatic Victory, as I found that the easiest to learn how to do. Basically, it means keeping quiet, keeping out of wars, and earning lots of money so that you can buy the allegiance of city states. This gets a little boring and makes for a long game (at least, it does if you play as badly as I do), so I now incline to trying to achieve Science victories (which also makes for a long game -- unless you are a much better player than I am). Science relies on getting a few useful wonders and growing your population as much as you can -- which means you have to deal with the problem of unhappiness.

Anyway, I wouldn't have found all this out without reading some of the posts in the strategy section of the forum, and consulting various guides that can be found by using Google. Believe me, this is a complex game, and if you want to win you need to read about how the game works. Some things are not obvious. The game often doesn't work like the real world, or as an ordinary human might expect. It works according to the way the programmers thought it ought to work, and you need to discover how the "world inside the game" operates. It is easy to be seduced into getting some pretty pixels on the screen which don't actually help you to win. One has to realise that under all of the colours and the graphics there are just mathematical formulae -- probably the best players are the ones who have their own spreadsheets that analyse the cost/benefit relationships in all sorts of scenarios! Remember, Napoleon was a mathematician, and calculated everything.

Oh, and god's sake get rid of the advisors. If you follow their advice (and if you automate workers and the like) you will not actually be playing the game yourself. You will be allowing the computer to play itself while using you as a handy device to click buttons. Get Enhanced User Interface (in the mods section) and disable those annoying "suggestions". Then you will be learning about the game because you will be learning what your decisions should be based on.

Best of luck from a similarly puzzled numpty player.

 

[Janskey]

What do you typically have by turn 100? How many cities, workers & other units? What buildings, technologies and social policies do you have?

 

[denali1]

Mornin',

Thanks to everyone for their advice. Although I realize the Celts are not everyone's cup of tea, and I'm not terribly fond of the leader they picked (I'd have preferred they picked my ancestor, Niall Noígíallach, but I'm biased), but it's just my thing; good, bad or indifferent.

Anthem4 and mbbcam, you both raise good points. I do let the computer do a lot of driving, mainly because in the past when I tried to micromanage cities, I screwed it up hardcore. Past advice I was given was not to allow embassies, because that would give the computer the ability to "see" my civ and make it easier to attack me. My understanding is that the cost of me doing that is it precludes research agreements. Is this strategy still valid (or, for that matter, was it ever valid)?

reddishrescue I looked at the victory screen. The only screen that seemed to give stats was the Demographics screen. Is this what you're talking about? If so, Austria let me in land mass, military size and GNP. Everything else, I dominated.

Back to mbbcam, I wondered about the Wonders (pun not intended) myself. I'm not sure what she owned, but I know I constantly ran into a problem of somebody beating me to the punch on wonders. I beat them to the Great Library and the Rationalism wonder (can't remember the name), as well as a few others, but one or more civs ate my lunch in that regard.

I also didn't explore much, so this may play into some further advice given by Anthem4.

Jansky, I tend to go for 4, no more than 5, cities. I usually have three to four workers servicing them. My military tends to be 3 archers, 3 pictish warriors and 3 artillery. I also buy 4 boats and put them on wander. As far as buildings and tech, I tend to go after them all. Social policies, I tend to go Tradition, then Liberty, then Rationalism and then Freedom.

Is there a guide for proper city management that someone might suggest? I've done searches on Google for guides, but most seem to be for people playing on Diety level and seem to make some assumptions about skills I don't have or have yet to learn. I'll start adding in some of the advice that I do feel confident about that you've all provided. Thank you very much!

denali1

 

[mbbcam]

**former English teacher alert** One thing you missed editing was "diety" instead of deity (not sure why this is such a popular error -- perhaps more people are on diets than there are using the Latin word for "god")

Try these:

http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/

Very thorough and pretty good, in my view. At least, I found them useful.

I find it advisable not to attempt most of the wonders. It is better to focus on other things. But one shouldn't have too many hard and fast rules. The basis of everything is geography. Find yourself on good terrain, and many things are possible; find yourself in a bad area, and it will be a struggle. And you have to learn to "change gear" when situations change. Don't blindly carry on doing the same thing -- a strategy that works at the beginning of the game may be disastrous as conditions alter.

 

[espeed]

Dont get caught up with the points system, like a previous poster said, its heavily tied towards expansion and wonder building. I play immortal currently and infact i build very little in the way of wonders. I can be close to dead last in points but be ranked in the top 3 on most demographics, so yeah.....points are misleading is the best way to describe....

In the grand scheme as long as you have a good play style, you should be successful with any civ you choose to play as. Their unique bonuses whilst they may have a good impact early on kind of depreciate away over the sheer length of the game....

Dont be afraid to go to war as you may have no choice in latter dificulty levels, emporer and up.....

 

[Resipsa]

I would follow a build until you get comfortable with it like Tanabark's 3 city Tradition opening which use food caravans in the early game to boost your expansions. That is a good build for lower levels as it doesn't send Caravans to the AI to get beakers. AS the Celts use your forests to get a pantheon adn then chop em in you r capital to get an early wonder like the GL. You'll be in good shape then to go in whatever direction you want.

 

[beetle]

I usually play on Warlord level and I win regularly. So I decided to up my game and play on the Prince level. I lost, but I'm not sure how I lost.

I think you will ultimately enjoy the game more on Price than you did Warlord. Please describe more about your loss. About what turn and what victory condition did the AI get? Being behind in points is to be expected, even after you win, don’t let that bother you at all.

I tend to go for 4, no more than 5, cities. I usually have three to four workers servicing them. My military tends to be 3 archers, 3 pictish warriors and 3 artillery. I also buy 4 boats and put them on wander. As far as buildings and tech, I tend to go after them all. Social policies, I tend to go Tradition, then Liberty, then Rationalism and then Freedom. Is there a guide for proper city management that someone might suggest?

That mostly all sounds fine to me, as you are not over building your military. IMHO, optimizing your build queue, tech tree, and city management can come later. OTOH, the first big trick after NC that I picked up from this board is opening and finishing Rationalism ASAP. I suspect that trying to fill out liberty is holding you back. You will probably have a couple policies between Tradition and Rationalism. Honor, Patronage, and Commerce might all be better.

 

[klaskeren]

Only build Things that matter, expand, quickly, but never late. Build 2-3scouts\warriors before any build and go explore the entire map, plan your route of exploration, have at least 4 cities before turn 60 with tradition. Have enough workers and grow constantly.micro every tile your city works. Go for national college as early ad possible, plan your techpath, how much you can grow for your happiness and when to bulb GS, clear every barb camp quest, don't build wonders before turn 150 or so. Get food caravans in your cities asap. Just some things on the top if my head, sry for typos, damn smartphone

 

[Janskey]

You could try focusing on science buildings. The sooner you get your libraries, universities, public schools and research labs up, the better. Early on, you don't really need other buildings than granaries, libraries and maybe shrines. Never go into unhappiness, because it practically halts your growth.

 

[denali1]

Mornin',

mbbcam LOL Good catch. I forgot the old "I before E" rule. I'll check out the website. Hopefully, it'll go into city management some, because I know I need help there.

espeed and beetle I apologize for leaving this out of the OP. The machine took me to 2050, which is why points are important. I couldn't achieve any sort of victory conditions before the game ended, but Austria still won on points.

resipsa Thank you for speaking (yes, that's a play on your forum handle) . I'll look into that! Thanks!

beetle I'll try that as well. Thanks!

klaskeren One of my problems in micro managing cities is I screw it up, badly (see post 7). Can you offer more specific advice on how to do that, please?

Jansky So, to summarize, forget everything except those buildings you name? Will I run into problems with gold generation doing that?

Thanks again to everyone for your help! I appreciate it!

denali1

 

[beetle]

I apologize for leaving this out of the OP. The machine took me to 2050, which is why points are important. I couldn't achieve any sort of victory conditions before the game ended, but Austria still won on points.

Okay, that explains it. My games often go long, but I have never played 500 turns without me or an AI launching the space ship. Were you close? Or did you just not bother to build space ship parts?

I wish I could figure out settings that made late-tech warfare more routinely pivotal to victory. Win or lose, I often choose “one more turn” because I enjoy the nukes and GDR.

beetle I'll try that as well. Thanks!

Lots of good advice here, but I suspect that prioritizing Rationalism is the one and only thing thing that you really need to do differently.

 

[mbbcam]

I forgot the old "I before E" rule.

It doesn't matter if you did! It doesn't apply here -- it's E before I, though it's not after C. The word is of French origin -- it comes from "déité", which in turn comes from the Latin "deus". So the E comes first. (End of lesson )

Carl's guides are very comprehensive, and are avowedly aimed at less experienced players. There is enough reading there for several weeks. If you don't come away from them with a better understanding of the game, I'd be very surprised.

I think one of the problems for the novice, or less expert player, is that one tends to build everything (wonders, buildings, units) without really knowing why -- there is no clear understanding of what they are for, or if/why/when they should be built. One just spams them out with no clear plan. It takes knowledge of the game to be able to create a plan. I spent a lot of time just clicking on things because the next step seemed to require "more gold" or "more culture" etc, etc. I suspect that better players have a plan before they start -- they are not thinking two turns ahead, they are thinking a hundred turns ahead (or perhaps more). Their play is not reactive, it is dictatorial (if I can use that word here). What I mean is that they dominate the situation because of their knowledge of how the game works -- they are not taken by surprise and desperately trying to fight brush fires all the time. They know where they are going, and keep to the plan with minor variations when needed.

I think the advice that someone else gave above -- to learn a standard opening gambit, as you would in chess -- is very useful. Having a standard 3/4 city opening that uses Tradition is a good way to go. Always build the same things in the same order, so you don't have to think about it much. And take notes about what important decisions you have taken and when. Potentially, you can replay the same opening again, with different decisions at those critical moments, and see what the difference is.

Basically, I have come to believe that the ability to play Civilization well is a sign of many "wasted" hours spent hunched over the keyboard, and probably an equal, or even greater number, spent reading up and watching videos of other people play!

Videos of "Let's Play" games are quite surprising and very illuminating. It's amazing how experienced players will treat what looks to me like a major catastrophe with blithe insouciance -- "Oh, they've planted a city in the area I wanted to settle. Never mind, I'll go and conquer it later. In fact, perhaps it's better that way, because they will have done the basic building for me..."

 

[Abraxis]

I personally despise the Celts as their bonus means you cannot develop tiles, and you have to get lucky on your start for the bonus to even work. This can help in the early game to get the correct religious bonuses you want, though

Don't take these 'downsides' too seriously. The UA and UU get you a free religion without needing the piety social policy track, building an early shrine, or wasting your pantheon belief on a piety generator. That is plenty powerful enough, and as powerful as you need.

'Lucky' doesn't come into it either. Their bias sets them next to a forest. You have to be extremely unlucky for that not to happen. Whether it's two or three barely makes a difference. Either way you'll get your pantheon and will be set to get a first religion even on deity with 14 other civs. A lot of people even prefer only having the +1 piety as it gives you more time to scout, so as to be more informed when picking your pantheon belief.

Worrying about these 'issues' that keep it from being slightly stronger is not really maintaining an accurate perspective. It all boils down to "Free religion, with no effort required". When you view it as such, it's a pretty awesome ability.

They are my favorite and best civ for Deity play. Keep playing them OP!!

 

[reddishrecue]

You can get a good standard victory with tradition and other social policies like rationalism so that you can do research on what victory will benefit you the most. If you keep a good trade route system in between your cities you can have enough growth for an economy. Tabarnak has a section about this. Peddroelm has the lps for the domination victory.

 

[mbbcam]

An interesting observation from the designers at Firaxis:

"One of the things that I've always thought was most interesting about AI was that the harder the AI gets, the more it tends to mould the play of the player into the play of a computer. To beat the highest level of AI in Civ, I have to play with such ruthless efficiency and insight that I almost feel I'm not myself anymore. I'm playing as a machine version of me."

(taken from this page: http://tinyurl.com/psuwnjd )

Cheers

 

[Ribannah]

1. Build more Workers. You need at least as many as you have cities. More if they are slow.

2. Manage your cities. Choose and fix the tiles you want to work and make sure your cities grow.

3. Check for trade opportunities every turn.