Settings discussion for single player

So I'm getting pretty decent with Civ V, but lost to Greece in an epic (ads in awesome) game couple nights ago. Long story short I had a fun proxy war with the Zulus, my science with babylon got so advanced that other nations were in fear of me, but hte greeks got a diplo win.

Anywho, lets talk settings.

Difficulty for me I'm still on price, I may go ahead 1 more tho well see if I can win too much on prince before I do that tho.

I turn off barbarians as I feel they're too much for the AI to handle, and a giant pain in my butt. So if it makes things less annoying and harder, I say no barbs.

I play on large tectonic (mod) and cut back on city states. I usually half the CS's and add 2-3 civs... so typically on a large map ill have 8-10 city states and 13 or so Civs.

I also use a mod that slows down research. I play on standard but the tech tree researches at epic. I tried marathon but it didn't work well; all civs were broke because you had to keep building units which costs a fortune, and you couldn't build up new buildings with higher tech to offset the costs. Come to think of it this could be avoided from the start if the mod would allow for instant production to tech/wealth. But I digress.

Oh and I don't allow city ruins as I think they're dumb and just give me too much of an advantage of the AI.

Use of spies would have prevented an AI diplomatic victory.

Yes, the AIs tend to suffer more from barbs than humans do even with the handicap bonuses the AI gets against barbs. (So much that some players when moving up a level turn on raging barbs)

I don't play any map bigger than standard. I keep the default number of major opponents but decrease the City state ratio down from the default 2:1 ratio to 1:1.

Note that number of religions that can be founded is specific to map size instead of number of civs in the game; so increasing number of major civs increases competition to found a religion and also gives more civs who won't mind having your religion spread to them.

I have city ruins off myself, because it indeed gives a huge advantage to the human. But what I'd really like to see is something like "no unity pod spreading" from SMAC that had one or two ruins near all major players instead of being all or nothing.

Oh I also turn on the courthouse right away but I think thats the really advanced setup mod lol.

That mod is a must. I love being able to disable certain civs if I just had a game where they were ultra prominent.

1. I rarely if ever choose which civ, usually when a new one comes out which has been for almost a year now.

2. I play on 12/24 setting (i.e the default for HUge maps)

3. NO barbarians as they annoy me thanks to the difficult escorting of caravns

4. Warlord... still...

5. Fractal

6. Promotion and Policy saving enabled. I love to abuse my 50 heal bonus xD

I'll have to check out the tectonic mod mentioned in OP. Been doing fractal myself but I think "tectonic" is a perfect one word description of what I'm truly looking for in a map. I liked the idea of the one that is supposed to emulate earth but was turned off by "all civs start on the continent equivalent to Eurasia" bit.

I used to check complete kills, as it cracked me up once when a sole Babylonian Great Engineer kept roaming the map, at war with everybody and running for its life. I missed getting the defeated leader screens, so I don't use it anymore.

I don't change any settings usually, bar for low sea level if I feel like going Liberty, and selecting one or two culturally linked civs for flavour.

I like having a different experience, and I also discard a ot of games 75-100 turns in, if they don't look like they'll be fun in the long run (usually because I screwed up/had a bad start/whatever), so what I do is roll 1-44 on random/org for the civ (44 is scenarios/ASoIaF mod) and then 1-60 for the map, which I reroll if it doesn't work for my civ. Sometimes because it doesn't work gameplaywise (Polynesia on Great Plains, Attila on Archipelago) or flavor wise (Zulus for Europe, Poland for Americas), and if I roll a "real" map (Earth, Eastern Us, Asia etc.) I set the opposing civs up so that they make sense.

I also like to put the core settings on random, or customize them if I want more water, more mountains or whatever because of my civ.

jrwh said:

I'll have to check out the tectonic mod mentioned in OP. Been doing fractal myself but I think "tectonic" is a perfect one word description of what I'm truly looking for in a map. I liked the idea of the one that is supposed to emulate earth but was turned off by "all civs start on the continent equivalent to Eurasia" bit.

Click to expand...

Tectonic is really great. But one thing I noticed is I've yet to see an atoll, which sucks if you want to be Japan as I do. But otherwise it's been a real hoot. I love the maps it generates. It usually comes up with a couple continents and it's very random but intelligent. Up north there will be ice and tundra, there's desert where you would expect, it's basically the only map Ill use.

Gonna grab it and load up a map right now. I'm excited! If I read correctly there is a tectonics from these forums and another from steam that have nothing to do with each other? I think the one from here is the one I want.

i cant say for certain but the one i use has plate speed as an option.

For Prince I usually go with default settings minus Time Victory, for no particular reason (all games are over before t500 anyway). Recently I switched resource scarcity from Standard to Abundant, let's see how it turns out.

I like Standard-Large (Small) Continents Map, since they are more realistic in terms of information that other civs receive about your activities. Also I tried Y(n)AEMP and will probably switch back to it. The charm of alternative history is too great.

Difficulty is usually King or Emperor for me. King if I feel like doing something gimmicky or just playing around a bit; Emperor for more of a challenging game while still not having ridiculous AI bonuses and still being able to mess up and have a chance.

Bounce between Small/Standard maps and on both I always turn down city-states and add a couple more major civs. And policy saving... if I'm hitting Renaissance or Ideology in a turn or two I'd rather not use that policy right now

I tend to like the unpredictability of Shuffle maps, makes you appreciate well-rounded civs more and forces you to adapt, plus the joy of exploring!

I tend to play Emperor for most games, though I'll occasionally go Deity just to prove to myself I can still win on Deity. Emperor is the level I enjoy the game most though, as I feel like I can play with a random civ on a random map and with the first start I roll without having to click restart game. And random civ, random map is my preference, though I always stick to standard size, as my doddery old computer struggles on larger map sizes, and smaller ones aren't fun for me.

I always leave barbarians at standard setting, almost always set Legendary Start on and about half the time will disengage diplomatic victory, though since the last set of changes to this I've been more willing to leave it in place.

Save promotions and save policy always remain clicked for me, though actually I can't remember the last time I actually saved a policy or promotion. Autosave is always off.

I tend to play on the following settings:
Emperor
Epic speed
Huge map
18 civs, 24 CS
Small Continents + with Low Sealevel OR Scrambled Earth OR Continents
Totally random civs EXCEPT Polynesia is disabled
No Espionage (It's a tedius annoying chance-based system. No thank you)
I play Emperor because there I can go into the game without a true set plan and still make it to the top. I can win at Deity, it's just a bit of a chore at times.
I do run a couple of mods, mostly to remove the randomness of prophets, and reduce the OP-ness of archers. Nothing truly gamebreaking.

I use quite a few mods so this'll probably look weird:
Emperor
Communitas(low sea level, 2 Pacific Rifts)
Standard/Quick Speed
Standard/Large/Huge
Raging Barabarians
Allow tile flipping, Allow tile acquiring(Cultural Diffusion)
Allow Human Vassalage, Allow Research Agreements(Civ IV Diplomatic Fratures)

Yeah I probably use too many mods, but I could not play without the ones listed here. Anyways this setup usually gives me an awesome experience

I tried no barbs, no ruins, OCC, less or more resources, high sea, low sea. Definitely standard settings fit me.

I hate barbs more than AI, and they many times they decay me. But nothing can replace this angry that comes when I see this dirty red units right where it's the more annoying.

Ruins are fun. I like to rush scout maps to find this precious (specially with Shoshones). And it forces me to scout. I have a bad use to turtle in my corner.

OCC, large and huge map is when I'm bored on a difficult level. I like to play large or huge map with historical placements and geographic resources. I enjoyed a lot Japan, Mongolia, America, British and may more game in that set up.

Civ 4 Diplomacy Mod is always on for me. I would not still play this game if it wasn't for that mod. Large map (usually Continents) and low ocean levels for more land, and 14 civs and 24 city states.

Barbs are usually Off since the AI can't handle them.

I typically play on Prince, although I have won at higher levels, including deity.
I use no mods.
My settings are usually all standard with quick combat checked sometimes.

When I was first learning the game, I would lower the number of AI, and raise the number of City-States, to make it a little easier. Then I would work my way back to the base number.

King difficulty currently as i'm coming back to civ5 after a while. Did win a few Emperor games back in the day but it was tough. Default settings, standard map 8/16, random topography, but i prefer land games over islands. Random civ every time unless i'm experimenting with something specific.

I'm into big games so I play on a Huge map, Terra, with 22/41. Yes. That's right. 22 civs, 41 city states. I wish there was a dll where you can play all 42 (?) civs, but 22/41 will have to do. To scale the game, I usually just play on Normal speed. That way, exploration is realistic and you don't have the time to explore the whole continent before renaissance.