Help w/ basics

Good evening Civfanatics community, I'm looking for help.
I seem to have a real problem generating and maintaining gold, science, culture, religion and production per turn.
This issue for myself pertains to times in and out of war. I understand how to work tiles and the tile output but I can never seem to get it up there, killing me if I have to get a time victory.
Recently I played Korea and reached my all time high for science: 450, gold: 175, culture: 88 and religion: 70.
Whether or not that's high at all, it's my all time high. During this game, I played against Polynesia as a civ and went to war with him. It wasn't my choice.
My army had to be tripled to do anything and my gpt dropped to 60 and science dropped to 113. This effectively destroyed my science victory, causing me to lose point wise.
Unfortunately, even with my highs, I was still in sixth for production and gnp. (6 civ games)
Can I have any hints, tips or advice that would help me to better my game? It would be super useful. I play on 4 difficulty. I sincerely thank anyone who took the time to read and respond to this thread. Thank you.

Don't accept embassies unless it is necessary(which rarely occurs) as the AI sometime determine your strength based on what vision they have. Don't allow open borders as they can gather more intelligence on you. If you're always fearing war, building walls in border cities should give it sturdiness, while also forming chokepoints within the city's radius such as not chain improving the tiles to prevent fast pillaging of your lands. Also if you're coastal, You should do your best to exploit ranged naval unit to perform attacks on land units.

Tumor said:

...My army had to be tripled to do anything...

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I'm going to interpret the above phrase as "had to be tripled to kill Polynesia" rather than "defend myself". Don't take DOWs personally and only build many units if capturing the capital will benefit you. As you have noticed you were held back which although wasn't the intention of the AI(as it isn't that smart) Polynesia came out top(unless he gave you cities etc).

Tumor said:

...Recently I played Korea and reached my all time high for science: 450...

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You didn't say what era you were in, but don't take this the wrong way 450bpt won't cut it for a SV. 1500bpt for a 4-city empire is very good number.

Science comes directly from population and specialists(secularism). Settle in good locations which imo are locations with at least 1 unique luxury, a river nearby, and some hills. Once Civil Service is researched riverside farms yield 1 extra food. Lakes and oasis serve as sources of fresh water for the civil Service buff. Don't be put off by a lake surrounded by hills as each tile will yield 2 food and 2 hammers upon Civil Service if farms are built instead of mines.
Gold issues are usually gone when each city is connected to your capital with roads, and/or markets are built(this should be a priority for Korea given their UA). Consider a religion and picking Tithe. Sell all your stuff(keep 1 copy of each luxury though). Each strategic resource the AI wants can be sold for 2gpt which should always be the trade you accept, even for "friends".

Hi there

In Civ 5, trading seems to be the primary way to get gold per turn, rather than tile improvements. The value of coastal cities, which get much bigger benefits from trading over the sea lanes, is especially important. I tend to focus all my trade from one coastal city and to build all gold enhancing buildings and wonders in that city.

It's difficult to help without specific questions.

Good place to start, threads are prefixed with which version of the game they apply to
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=451

basics
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=523892

Another good option is to check out some "let's play"-s. Seems like you have basic knowledge of the game and its mechanics, so a pro explaining his every move would be a good demonstration of how things should be going.

The one I'm following currently is BruinBound - his games are diverse, he himself sounds thoughtful and friendly and the quality is good.

Others very much worth checking out are:
- Marbozir - very good player, perfect commentary, although somewhat follower to only 1 tactic, which I'm not a big fan of. You can learn a lot from his LPs (Plus he has A TON!)
- Acken - also a pro, not the best quality, but that never bothered me. Has sounded and soundless LPs. Uses different strategies from one another.
- MadDjinn (SBFMadDjinn is his channel) - Only his LPs make me feel like Deity is child's play. Sadly his BNW game are few and it doesn't look like he's about to do more.
- Tommynt - Soundless and not the best quality, but going 4 scouts into settler and making it work perfectly would amaze me even if I'm drunk, looking through a car window while outside is dark and raining. (And it's no where near that.)
- Peddroelm - check him out for a lot of early and late game wars with honor and other cool plays (Domination game starting with Piety for example!)

Heads up - these are all Deity level players, so their game will be much more different, but wouldn't they be the best teachers?

P.P. I haven't watched each and every LPs of these guys, only a handful from all together, but such have been my impressions.

If you are a newer player and don't feel like watching only deity players, I'll suggest you take a look at Quill18's Civ 5 LP's. He's not a deity player but he's very entertaining to watch, and you'll certainly learn some from him too. I also enjoy watching PrimevalCiv and Korae from time to time. And also one big mention if you're into warfare: ElceeplaysCiv. Elcee's imo one of the most entertaining players to watch, and I really hope he does more vids soon. (ARE YOU READING THIS LC?!)

I'll also point towards Chunkook's list of youtubers. They are all really good. Acken's account is called RezoAcken on youtube, just to make sure you search for the right thing. =)

Best of luck mate!

ToborajniN said:

I'll also point towards Chunkook's list of youtubers. They are all really good. Acken's account is called RezoAcken on youtube, just to make sure you search for the right thing. =)

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Thanks mate, totally forgot that his youtube channel's different from his account here.

And watching non-deity players is also a good idea, since when I first started out, watching deity has controversial to me - having the AI have so many advantages kind of put me off at first.

I would like to offer a few good rules-of-thumb for you to look for when settling. (Especially the first city)

1: Coast is your friend. If you can a few coastal cities, sending a cargo ship or two to your capital will make it grow a LOT.

2: Settling next to a mountain is usually very good as this means you can build observatories later in the game that will boost your science by +50%. (Very very nice)

3: Settling next to a river or a lake/oasis is almost always better than settling away from it. This is because it opens up some good buildings, like Water-mill, Gardens and Hydro Plant. The river tiles will also give you a lot of food. (Also don't forget to put farms instead of mines on hill tiles that are next to rivers)

4: Settle on a hill if you can. This will not only give you an extra hammer in the city, but will also increase the defence strenght by +5 (i think?) which can often help a lot against barbarians etc.

5: Try to look for 3-gain tiles next to your city. What I mean by this is that it's usually very nice to have something that will give you a total of at least 3 in food/prod. Examples of tiles like this are: Cattle (3 food), Stone (2 food, 1 prod), Bison (2 food, 1 prod), Deer (2 food, 1 prod) etc. This will help out a fresh city a whole lot.


When I first started playing I found it pretty difficult to decide where to settle optimally, and therefore I thought I'd give you a few pointers of things to look for. Don't be afraid to move your settler a turn or two if it means that you can grab a city spot that's a lot better than the one you started on. The game does not always put you in the best spot available after all. And also: Always use the warrior to go up on a hill or similar on the first turn before you decide to settle. This is so that you don't accidentaly missout on a resource or two that you would otherwise be able to get.

I do hope that this helps a little bit. There are after all a whole lot of things that can be said about a whole lot of things, so if there are any specific thing you would like to know more about I think it's better if you ask rather than we all writing wall-long texts about every aspect of the game.

Wow. You're going to get the phone book with this question. There is good advice here if you can digest it all.

When starting civ, I would say pick one or two areas to focus on and let the rest slide. For instance, you should probably start with combat and growth. Learn how to defend your territory, and focus on getting food. Learning combat will keep you safe and growth will lead to all other areas (science production etc). Most mechanics in the game start with what dirt your population is working, provided you have enough population to do it.