New to Civ: Suggestions?

Hey all!

I am new to Civ. I have about 30-40 hours under my belt, really enjoying myself currently.

I have won 4 games on "warlord" difficulty as China, Poland, Korea, and the Netherlands. Poland and Korea as Science wins, and China and Netherlands as domination. Before I move up to normal difficulty and beyond, I want to fine tune some things and make some decisions.

My questions are:

1. Are there any particularly balanced civs that suit every map/difficulty/win condition?

2. I usually always take Tradition, into a little piety, then get rationalism filled out. Are there better policies to take?

3. I usually focus growth for like fist couple cities until I can either focus production for larger armies or science for faster technologies. Is this okay? Any better suggestions?

4. I'm not really sure how religion works, but I usually found one, pick tenets that work for my surroundings or victory path, then try to spread it to all my cities and nearby city states. Does religion matter that much and/or how should I do go about playing with it?

5. Anything else you suggest me do/alter?

Also, for some reason I prefer European/Asian civs. To me, it just doesn't feel right taking some of the ancient civilizations into the modern era. Is this dumb or what?

Thanks friends!

toystor3 said:

Hey all!

I am new to Civ. I have about 30-40 hours under my belt, really enjoying myself currently.

I have won 4 games on "warlord" difficulty as China, Poland, Korea, and the Netherlands. Poland and Korea as Science wins, and China and Netherlands as domination. Before I move up to normal difficulty and beyond, I want to fine tune some things and make some decisions.

My questions are:

1. Are there any particularly balanced civs that suit every map/difficulty/win condition?

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You can win any victory condition as any civ. Civs with bonuses towards science are not only better than average going towards science victory, but also all the other victory conditions as well. Civs with bonuses towards culture can also be applied to other victory types via completing Rationalism tree faster.

toystor3 said:

2. I usually always take Tradition, into a little piety, then get rationalism filled out. Are there better policies to take?

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Full tradition first is one of the standard play options, but more so on Prince and above; on Warlord you still get happiness bonuses.

Piety is rarely chosen as filler, Patronage - Consulates is perhaps the most popular filler while waiting to be allowed into Rationalism, but you sometimes see people dip into Commerce, Aesthetics, Exploration, or even Honor instead while waiting to be allowed into Rationalism. It really doesn't matter nearly as much as avoiding delaying Rationalism.

toystor3 said:

3. I usually focus growth for like fist couple cities until I can either focus production for larger armies or science for faster technologies. Is this okay? Any better suggestions?

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Personally, I lock individual tiles (and lock specialists) instead of using the governor.

toystor3 said:

4. I'm not really sure how religion works, but I usually found one, pick tenets that work for my surroundings or victory path, then try to spread it to all my cities and nearby city states. Does religion matter that much and/or how should I do go about playing with it?

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Yes, the follower tenets to choose from (as well as the pantheon) are based on terrain.
It's usually better to enhance a religion before building missionaries.
Spreading works best if post conversion the cities can provide a lot of passive influence for each other.

1. All civs are competitive against the AI but some are just more fun and enable more degenerate strategies. Spain for instance.

2. Tradition is good for everything, liberty is good for war but almost strictly worse than tradition. Honor and Piety are just crappier in every way. The other trees depend on your strategy, but Rationalism is just by far the best, no contest.

3. Growth is pretty much the best for everything, except maybe super quick domination.

4. Religions are better kept to just your cities ( at higher difficulties ). It's not possible to compete against the AIs for faith, that's basically all they do in life lol. So pick beliefs that will work with just your cities.

5. Watch people play on Deity on youtube and realize how badly you've been playing this entire time lol
Once you watch just one game you'll easily be able to crush Immortal difficulty.

Since you are new to the game, you might enjoy trying out different approaches. For me, Tradition then Rationalism is usually the easiest way to win. But are you playing for easy wins or variety in your games?

Liberty is a valid tree to start with. You can settle a small number of cities and go to war with composite bows (or earlier!). Or you try to settle 7 or 8 cities and put war off til later, or avoid it altogether. Honor can be fun too, but I find it is often challenging.

toystor3 said:

1. Are there any particularly balanced civs that suit every map/difficulty/win condition?

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FWIW, I made a tier-list of civs here, rated for Deity difficulty. Some of the civs on it shine a bit more on lower difficulty levels, but most of the higher ones shine even more on lower difficulty levels.

2. I usually always take Tradition, into a little piety, then get rationalism filled out. Are there better policies to take?

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Liberty and Honor are fantastic if you want to use conquest as part of your overall strategy. I've also made a domination guide for noobs, which is available here. It's aimed at Immortal and Deity, but many of these tips work well on lower difficulty levels as well.

3. I usually focus growth for like fist couple cities until I can either focus production for larger armies or science for faster technologies. Is this okay? Any better suggestions?

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It depends on what your aims are. If you want to produce an army and steamroll the landmass, focus on production exclusively. There are turn 60 victories on Standard size maps on lower difficulty levels. The people that won those didn't care about growth.

The higher difficulty level you're on, the more growth matters, but it never really matters that much, believe me.

4. I'm not really sure how religion works, but I usually found one, pick tenets that work for my surroundings or victory path, then try to spread it to all my cities and nearby city states. Does religion matter that much and/or how should I do go about playing with it?

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The higher you go, the less it matters.

5. Anything else you suggest me do/alter?

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Choose strategies that make playing the game the most fun for you, and don't worry about anyone else's opinion if it conflicts with yours. Some people want to harp on and on about optimal and suboptimal, but at the end of the day, this is a game. Have fun

Also, for some reason I prefer European/Asian civs. To me, it just doesn't feel right taking some of the ancient civilizations into the modern era. Is this dumb or what?

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You played with China? Wu lived mostly in the 7th century. That makes her more or less a contemporary of Mohammed. Having her around in the 21st century, murdering her own family to take power, seems fairly fantastic to me, but again, it's a game, it's not meant to be real.

Building The Pyramids in Edinburgh, razing New York to nothing from size 15 pop, converting Mecca to Judaism, it's all just fun

poxpower said:

2. Tradition is good for everything, liberty is good for war but almost strictly worse than tradition. Honor and Piety are just crappier in every way. The other trees depend on your strategy, but Rationalism is just by far the best, no contest.

4. Religions are better kept to just your cities ( at higher difficulties ). It's not possible to compete against the AIs for faith, that's basically all they do in life lol. So pick beliefs that will work with just your cities.

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those are wrong and make me sad :/

yung.carl.jung said:

those are wrong and make me sad :/

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He hasn't seen wide + piety play?

or generally wide science, small piety (even though i don't like it i recognize it as a viable playstyle), violent cv, 3 city liberty openings..

there's so many diff strategies and saying that liberty is "almost strictly worse" than trad just hurts to read. this discussion has happened enough and i don't want to reiterate anything, all i will say it that it has been empirically proven that liberty can keep up with the best winning times ever recorded: acken played a testgame as korea and finished ~210 iirc on the first try, manpanzee played shoshone and finished sub t200 I think. recorded tradition victories on deity are only marginally faster I reckon. never seen sub t180 or smth crazy like that.

this was an older thread, but yes, we had that discussion. and then we had it again. and now we are not having it again

How does 3 city liberty work? Is it like 3 city nc with a delayed expansion?

I was referring to 3 city NC Compbow rushes, so a violent expansion, yes

This can also be used effectively for a peaceful vc, it's not just a dom strategy.

3 city Liberty is my strategy of choice for over 50% of games on Deity and nearly 80% on Immortal. The advantage of taking 2-3 AI capitals between T50 and T120 is unrivalled by anything else.

I think 2 city Honor is stronger on the NQ mod

I'd recommend putting in a hundred or so hours without attempting to follow the golden path. This so that you can play the game as intended and experiment for yourself. Then after a few hundred hours, start playing the optimal way that the forums have determined so that you can start winning.