Getting My Butt Kicked

Lrd Dread

Prince
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
318
I just switched to BNW yesterday and am getting my butt handed to me on any game higher than Warlord.

What is team 5 and why are they so good?
 
Well the key to BNW inmho. Do not grow faster than you can sustain. It is ok to go a little - on your gold as long it is not too long. Also get trade routes ASAP!!


No earthly idea what team 5 is.
 
Randall has it right.

Happiness and Gold are the key in BNW. As long as you prioritize those, you should be fine on at least Prince (which is all that I can talk about because that's what I play).

Cheers.
 
I just switched to BNW yesterday and am getting my butt handed to me on any game higher than Warlord.

What is team 5 and why are they so good?

Behind handed to you HOW?

The more specifics, the more/better help you will get here...
 
Behind handed to you HOW?

The more specifics, the more/better help you will get here...

What Aristos said. We can't help you much without any specifics.

On an aside note, Aristos, it's great to have you finally on these forums and not in the Rant Theread! :goodjob:
 
on turn 38 I was at 180 points on the scoreboard, 3 other civs were already in the 400's
 
What Aristos said. We can't help you much without any specifics.

On an aside note, Aristos, it's great to have you finally on these forums and not in the Rant Theread! :goodjob:

Ha! That's what YOU think. Others attacked me recently for DEFENDING BNW, imagine that... :lol:

As much as I have no problems criticizing something that is wrong to me, I also do not have a problem in reckoning when it finally got RIGHT. That is what happened with BNW to me, so kudos to Beach et all.
 
on turn 38 I was at 180 points on the scoreboard, 3 other civs were already in the 400's

Well, axiom 0 of Civ 5: disregard the scoreboard. (yes, a little extreme, but more accurate than not).

Concentrate on getting the hand of growth first. Growth (city/pop growth) is very important. From population comes science, gold/hammers (worked tiles), and mostly everything else. Just focus on getting an awesome first city in your first trials, while also paying attention to the new mechanics. The better your city, the more other civs will want to trade with it (bigger profits), and that is what you want (trade is a two way tool). That is how I would start improving.

Much more help is coming after this post, you will see.
 
I was wrong I guess... kicking it to the top to see if the community proves me right (helping).
 
Ha! That's what YOU think. Others attacked me recently for DEFENDING BNW, imagine that... :lol:

As much as I have no problems criticizing something that is wrong to me, I also do not have a problem in reckoning when it finally got RIGHT. That is what happened with BNW to me, so kudos to Beach et all.

Offtopic Comment.

May not always agree with Aristos but gotta pay kudos to that attitude.

:goodjob:
 
I got my ass handed to me too the first 3 games.
Then I guess I got used to the news and now it's like G&K.

Keep going and don't try new things. Many go with odd, extremized changes in their development and end up dying.
Play it like a GK that is more oriented on booming growth/economy than booming cannons.
 
Well the key to BNW inmho. Do not grow faster than you can sustain. It is ok to go a little - on your gold as long it is not too long. Also get trade routes ASAP!!

And I wouldn't disregard culture and tourism, or you'll get a nasty surprise if your happiness drastically drops once you get to ideologies. Just buld the guilds early and assign the specialists if you temporarily don't need much production and growth. That should be enough to resist ideoloical pressure later.
 
-Focus on science and gold.
-Get early trade routes to nearby civs for extra beakers
-Get NC later than you would in a similar G&K: you could go markets before libraries (to try and make AIs send you more trade routes), but not much later.
-Position troops between your border and nearby AIs, if they suddenly move out with 10+ units and/or a great general, you know a war is coming and can act accordingly.
-Pay off nearby AIs to war each other. Makes it much easier for yourself.
-Get universities asap and fill all their slots for GSs and use them for Academies around your primary science city (most likely capital).
-Buy university in main science cities if you got the gold, cities without jungle aren't as important.
-Aim for extra trade route techs after science techs and buy the caravans/cargo ships if you got the gold.
-Don't bother with any of the great work wonders, tbh, although you should still build the guids. Why? Renaissance: Fill the guild slots and buy culture city states to rush through Rationalism (and make sure you have slots you can use the artists/writers/musicians to fill).

Now comes the important part: Ideologies. At this point, the AIs should start having some influence over you, meaning if you choose a different ideology than them, you will get hit on the happiness. You now have 3 choices:

1) Choose whatever you want and try to manage happiness anyway.
2) Choose whatever you want and crush whoever is influencing you the most (should be easy in most cases, since even at deity, you will now be tech equivalent or leading at this point, due to the science/gold focus) - unless they are too far away or just too strong.
3) Choose THEIR ideology so you keep your happiness up.

Each ideology have their moments, of course, but they are all perfectly fine to whatever victory you are pursuing actually.

-Beeline Research labs (bulb Plastics with Oxford) if you can manage without artillery, if not, take artillery first.
-Try to get gold and buy Research labs in all cities (it's quite cheap in gold per hammers, actually).
-Try to get the landmarks (2 culture from great tile improvements) through the world congress (should be easy, the AIs really love it themselves).
-Get hotel, airport and National Visitor Center in capital for huge tourism boost (if your happiness is dropping from ideologies). While not going for a culture victory, it still helps alot to reduce the influence of other civ's idelogies if you can get 10 or 30% influential over them (the pressure is calculated as the difference between their pressure on you and your pressure on them, so reaching those key points can help a lot).
 
on turn 38 I was at 180 points on the scoreboard, 3 other civs were already in the 400's

What are doing in game. Like are you building buildings? If so, which ones? Are you building units? If so, which ones? Did you take the time to hunt ruins? Do you have your warrior out hunting barbs?

The score hop could be by an AI grabbing some juicey ruins.

You are playing level 3 right? That means you can make loads of mistakes and still do fine. Start off Building 2 scouts, Ruin hunt them puppies until there is no fog left.

Tech wise, I suggest Pottery-Writing. You want library's as soon as you can get them.
 
I used to get my butt kicked on prince, too. In my particular case, I was making the mistake of playing too scatter-shot and also indulging nasty neighbours, waiting everything to line up before I strike.

1) Focus, focus, FOCUS.

Make a plan and stick to it. Resist the urge to settle another city just because you found a great spot for production nearby. You can do it later. Don't research trapping just because it's only 2 turns and you have one deer nearby. You need universities much more.

2) If you've got a close neighbour who looks like he'll become a problem: take him out or at least cripple him before he becomes a very BIG problem. I've not seen this advice given on the forum frequently, so maybe I'm wrong and it's just my luck. But IMO, better to send whatever units you have early instead of waiting to assemble a solid force that can take him out with gusto.

If he's crushing other civs around you, then wait for him to send his units out to attack, then swoop in and pillage the capital. Then run away. If he's settling cities, kill his settlers and escorts. Try to pillage any improvements around the way side of the defending units. Sue for peace when you feel you've stalled him enough.​

I found that following these two guiding principles made prince a cakewalk. I actually just beat my first game above prince, an "experimental" game at emperor that I fully expected to lose. Thought I may owe that to getting lucky and discovering El Dorado first.
 
First few games I ended up getting whooped because I was trying too hard to experiment with the new "toys" of BNW. The recent game I went with a "back to basics" approach and it's going much better.
 
I'm guessing since you mentioned "Team 5" that you accidentally put two AI Civs together on the same team.

I've mistakenly done this when adding/removing/changing the number of AI in a game. In the advanced setup, check to make sure that each Civ is on a different team (ie, teams 1-x, where you're team 1 and x is the number of Civs in the game)
 
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