Do I suck in Civ 5?

I have problem with my play-style. I'm making too much units.
It's "ok" 'til 4th city,after 5th city I lose gold and happiness.
I just need to do something (couse I can't left nothing,it won't let me use next turn),and my science can't keep up with it.
My economy is developing too slow for the number of units,and I really don't have too much building to make in my cities.
How to deal with this problem?

JustStarted said:

I have problem with my play-style. I'm making too much units.
It's "ok" 'til 4th city,after 5th city I lose gold and happiness.
I just need to do something (couse I can't left nothing,it won't let me use next turn),and my science can't keep up with it.
My economy is developing too slow for the number of units,and I really don't have too much building to make in my cities.
How to deal with this problem?

Click to expand...

I have this problem too sometimes. You need a heck lot more cities than 4 or 5. The best way to do that is to conquer. Conquer the other civ's cities. Even though it makes unhappiness, give it a puppet until resistance wears off, then annex it and buy a courthouse ( without one your empire will plunge into very unhappiness!)!!! Next, make sure you build improvements on all the tiles surrounding your cities, that way your cities can produce much more. With your boosted production you could build units or buildings. First build units to protect your empire and then build up your infrastructure. Once you have a strong army (navy too if your cities are coastal) and an infrastructure ( like markets, banks, stock markets, libraries, observatories, and all the buildings that boost science, gold and production), start building wonders or projects ( like the Manhattan , or Apollo projects). I hope this is helpful (it helped me). Feel free to ask questions .

If your cities need something to produce, have them produce gold or science that way your gold or science is boosted. Try adopting Liberty, as it gives you a free settler and worker, it's ideal for fast expanders. Also, in the Renaissance and Industrial eras try adopting commerce and rationalism, 'cause those boost your science and gold production.

JustStarted said:

I have problem with my play-style. I'm making too much units.
It's "ok" 'til 4th city,after 5th city I lose gold and happiness.
I just need to do something (couse I can't left nothing,it won't let me use next turn),and my science can't keep up with it.
My economy is developing too slow for the number of units,and I really don't have too much building to make in my cities.
How to deal with this problem?

Click to expand...

Tradition has the best starting tree if you are most worried about happiness. (Monarchy has 50% reduction in pop based unhappiness; which for any empire within reason is much bigger than Liberty)

Circus Maximus is another key happiness national wonder. 5 happiness without maintenance costs. It does require a Colosseums in every city, but you need that building everywhere anyway.

In addition, for anything past four cities, I find it would have to offer a lot to be worth self-founding. Often much better to let the AI found it and then conquer it later.

You might also consider founding cities a bit further apart so that the same number of cities cover more luxuries.

Yeah, 4-5 cities is plenty for any victory. If you use domination, you'll obviously end up taking over cities and end up with more. You'll just have to learn how to deal with happiness by social policies, trading luxuries and through City State allies, which give you luxuries. Without some interaction with the AI, you will run into issues. You may also need to make your coliseums, circuses and wonders with happiness.

A note to ponder. If you are 1st in military might, it's best if you spend your production on other matters...

JustStarted said:

I have problem with my play-style. I'm making too much units.
It's "ok" 'til 4th city,after 5th city I lose gold and happiness.
I just need to do something (couse I can't left nothing,it won't let me use next turn),and my science can't keep up with it.
My economy is developing too slow for the number of units,and I really don't have too much building to make in my cities.
How to deal with this problem?

Click to expand...

I don't know what level and settings you play on, so some of this might not be helpful, but here are my suggestions.

--You really only need 3 or 4 base cities anyway. The rest you can just capture from other civs. Although many players choose to annex these, I prefer to puppet them. The reason being, it doesn't diminish your culture and allows you to get more social policies. You can deal with the unhappiness in several ways:

--You probably don't need that many units. Check the F9 info screen, and see what your troop strength is, relative to the #1 civ. I usually don't worry about being outnumbered until the #1 civ is double my strength. Adopting Autocracy reduces the cost of gold for military units.

--You can make your units more effective with promotions, meaning you need fewer units to support. The most effective method is to beeline to the Blitz and Logistics promotions for your melee and ranged units. This will allow you to attack twice in one turn, meaning one unit can take the place of two. Adopting Military Tradition speeds up this process. It's also beneficial to construct a citadel with a Great General. Put the citadel at a strategic location, either at a pinch point, or in a position to guard an open area. The citadel will weaken enemy units when they pass by, so you can easily kill them with your other units. Adopting Warrior Code produces a Great General.

--To boost your economy, get to the economic technologies as soon as you get a chance. Currency and Banking are two specific ones that come to mind, because they allow you to build Markets & Banks, which boost up your economy. I know this seems obvious, but sometimes you might put off those techs for something that seems more important, but many times it's not. Make it a point to research the economic techs unless there is just something else of dire importance. Also connect your cites to a trade route, and build Trading Posts on good gold-producing tiles.

--Since you said you don't have much else to build, it sounds like you are falling behind in technology. After your economy, I would make science techs a priority. Writing, Education, and Scientific Theory are big ones. Make it a point to research these so you can build Libraries, Universities, & Public Schools. It's also a good idea make sure any Bonus resources are improved, as are any good food-producing tiles.

These are some of the procedures I've found helpful. Hope you find something useful in them.

[oops, BNW specific, if vanilla gotta work gold tiles and get markets]

Well, do you make caravans or cargo ships? Basically, do you setup trade routes?

Next is connections to the capital for trade network boost.

In BNW those 2 should be enough to support a lot of units, more than enough to start conquering.

Then later you can use religion to get some good coinage and try to setup 1 city to be a huge gold maker (good food, good gold tiles, all the coin buildings, the caravan or cargo ship upgrades, and all the merchant specialists). The capital works for this but I usually make it a coastal city. And that is just early on, many of your strating cities should generate a bit of gold by mid game.

Just naming the basics in case you missed any of em since by your name you might be very new to the game.

I have been playing Civilization V for about 20 hours, and throughout that time, I have noticed my overall score is lower than everyone else. I would like some suggestions to help increase my score. Also I have only a few questions. How important is the score anyways? does it matter, if your score is last, does it mean your bound to lose.
thanks.

Old Slappy said:

I have been playing Civilization V for about 20 hours, and throughout that time, I have noticed my overall score is lower than everyone else. I would like some suggestions to help increase my score. Also I have only a few questions. How important is the score anyways? does it matter, if your score is last, does it mean your bound to lose.
thanks.

Click to expand...

Being last on score does not automatically mean you won't win, but it is pretty difficult to win if you are too far behind the leaders. On Immortal, I often win with the number 2 score by the ends, but for the first 50 turns, I'm usually last in score. At lower difficulties, that won't be the case, but on the higher difficulty levels, the AI gets big bonuses at the start, so you will be towards the bottom until you catch up.

The score is just a value given based on your population, tech, wonder count, military strength and so on. I believe population tends to be the most important thing for a high score, which also tends to be very important for technology growth.

I wouldn't focus on score too much, but if you are still in last by turn 100, you may need to work on your opening strategy. You likely are not growing properly. Either by not getting 3-4 cities going, or by focusing too much on production without letting your cities grow.

Old Slappy said:

I have been playing Civilization V for about 20 hours, and throughout that time, I have noticed my overall score is lower than everyone else. I would like some suggestions to help increase my score. Also I have only a few questions. How important is the score anyways? does it matter, if your score is last, does it mean your bound to lose.
thanks.

Click to expand...

I would also suggest that you make extensive use of the information screens, particularly the F9 screen. This tells you how you stack up against the other civs in population, military strength, production, economy, technology, etc. This is basically what makes up your score, but it's broken down into the individual components. This will help you figure out where you are weakest, and you can concentrate on improving those areas.

The problem with puppet cities is that you can't buy religious buildings or prioritize. Ive had puppet cities that will not build a monument, that annoys the crap out of me.

I know most people are obsessed with 4 city tradition playstyle but I like having around 6 cities. Mire cities means more culture & faith generation which makes it easier to win Citystate quests. You also have more cities & more hammers to get the World Fair. Plus the 5% penalty to science & culture is nothing. If people can only handle a 4 city tradition game then they are simply bad players. If you play wide with religious buildings as these are essential make sure you get the Sistine Chapel Wonder & Neuschwanstein. But especially Sistine Chapel, +25% culture is invaluable and more city sites means more archaeology sites.

Also if your founding cities keep a lookoy for stone, marble, horses & ivory. Depending on what you're doing it can be possible to settle cities around a cluster of stone & horses so you can build a circus & stoneworks in multiple cities if you optimize good city placing.
Remember that a city with Stoneworks & circus produces 3 happiness which is nearly as much as a Luxury & you only need 1 stone/horses per city as opposed to luxuries which only work once.
If I play wide I will prioritize on religious building Pagodas, stone, horses, Liberty policy. All those can give me 6 happiness per city. And that is before colosseums & luxuries.

You also have to master the diplomacy mechanics so Civs will trade their luxuries with you for a fair price. To do this denounce rogue Civs that are universally hated & denounced, pay 5 gold per turn to win favors etc.
Public Relations is an important part of the game.

There is nothing wrong with 6 cities, but there isn't anything wrong with 4 or 5 either.

The only problems I have with what you said is that as you add non puppeted cities, the amount of culture needed for the next policy increases quite a bit, but puppets do not change the requirements at all, and often build some culture buildings. For religion, it helps as you said.

The other issue I often run into, when wanting to go big, is by the time you have the happiness to handle more than 4 cities, it is too late to grow a city large enough to be worth having. Of course that means you are attempting to grow your cities rapidly.

There is nothing wrong with 4 cities either. Many of the record times are done with 4 cities, obviously it works quite well.

The first game I ever played at CIV5 (with BNW), I played Russia on the largest possible earth map at Marathon speed and the second easiest game mode (guess thats Settler?) Had almost no idea how things work, what are the guilds for, what is specialist, etc. Still it was huge fun, I had like 18 cities (as I had whole North America for me and Sweden was only neighbour) before I started a war and I defeated everyone around year 2010.

Needless to say, it took around a week to play it out, but it was insane, and I got hoocked up.
Then I started reading forums and watched some LPs to see how things work and around a month later I was already playing at Immortal ...

So my advice - go watch some LPs (Immortal and Deity), even if things at the lower levels are a bit different, its good for understanding the basics - growth, specialist slots, micro menagement of citizens, trade routes, food caravans, science, culture, policies, war ....

Watching lower level LPs has no educational value.

dragonxxx said:

So my advice - go watch some LPs (Immortal and Deity), even if things at the lower levels are a bit different, its good for understanding the basics - growth, specialist slots, micro menagement of citizens, trade routes, food caravans, science, culture, policies, war ....

Watching lower level LPs has no educational value.

Click to expand...

I like watching Marbozir's Deity LP's, and he does go into detail about why things are done a certain way, HOWEVER it's worth emphasising that Deity early game strategies do not necessarily work on Prince and vice versa.

In Deity you -

1. Steal workers from CS, rather than building them. Doesn't work on Prince/King/Empreror because the AI city states take too long to build a worker, but with their insane production bonuses on Deity...

2. Prioritise grabbing and improving luxuries, and sell them to AI for cash. On Prince escpecially, the AI doesn't have two pennies to rub together, so improving wheat etc. might be a better idea.

... and both these factors have knock-on effects, which i'm not fully aware of!

There's not so many Prince LP around and they are generally made by less experienced players who don't go into the strategy or micromanagement so much.

My strategy for lower difficulties (just won a SV with Poland in 1931 on Empreror with that approach, probably had a good start though) might be called "Great Library Trampolining"
. It is definitely not a good idea on Immortal/Deity

1. Build Monument, go Liberty
2. Then settler
3. Free worker please from social
4. Build Great Library, make sure you have Calendar researched by the time the college is built so that...
5. You can pick Philosophy for your Free Tech from building that wonder. This moves you into the Classical Era and lowers the cost of other techs, and gives you a free Social policy as Poland...
6. Philosophy unlocks the building of NC, might as well do it now while you still have one city
7. Now start expanding, research drama and poetry next so you can make the jump to Theology afterward, now you're in the Medieval Era and it's not even turn 90..
8. Now backtrack and get the nice stuff like Civil Service etc.

On deity though you can't beat the AI to Great Library no matter what and you need to settle your cities quick or all the spots will be taken. So you might have 3 or 4 cities but only one or two libraries and no wonders, at the same number of turns you'd have one city with GL + NC on the other strat..

You can't learn strategy by watching LP, really. You can only pick some tips and tricks but it takes experience and practice to learn how to make the right decision in a given situation. I think Dragonxxx's point was that high level LP's are extremely helpful for learning game mechanics and basic principles, something new players often lack, and he's absolutely right about that.

b7fanatix said:

1. Build Monument, go Liberty
2. Then settler
3. Free worker please from social
4. Build Great Library, make sure you have Calendar researched by the time the college is built so that...
5. You can pick Philosophy for your Free Tech from building that wonder. This moves you into the Classical Era and lowers the cost of other techs, and gives you a free Social policy as Poland...
6. Philosophy unlocks the building of NC, might as well do it now while you still have one city
7. Now start expanding, research drama and poetry next so you can make the jump to Theology afterward, now you're in the Medieval Era and it's not even turn 90..
8. Now backtrack and get the nice stuff like Civil Service etc.

On deity though you can't beat the AI to Great Library no matter what and you need to settle your cities quick or all the spots will be taken. So you might have 3 or 4 cities but only one or two libraries and no wonders, at the same number of turns you'd have one city with GL + NC on the other strat..

Click to expand...

I used to do this exact strategy, and still lose out on the GL some times on Emperor, but after following the 3 city Tradition method (sometimes altered for 2 cities until NC), I've found the GL really is not worth it. You lose too much time building it, when you could be building your cities up.

The only thing different about Prince and Immortal difficulty is the first worker will be hard created, instead of stealing it and of course it is harder to sell resources. You can get further workers later, just like Immortal/Diety, but to get by the added wait, you will have to spend an extra 7-10 turns hard building a worker. I'm not sure going Liberty is worth those turns, but given the skill level of the Prince player, it probably isn't that bad either.

b7fanatix said:

I like watching Marbozir's Deity LP's, and he does go into detail about why things are done a certain way, HOWEVER it's worth emphasising that Deity early game strategies do not necessarily work on Prince and vice versa.

In Deity you -

1. Steal workers from CS, rather than building them. Doesn't work on Prince/King/Empreror because the AI city states take too long to build a worker, but with their insane production bonuses on Deity...

2. Prioritise grabbing and improving luxuries, and sell them to AI for cash. On Prince escpecially, the AI doesn't have two pennies to rub together, so improving wheat etc. might be a better idea.

... and both these factors have knock-on effects, which i'm not fully aware of!

There's not so many Prince LP around and they are generally made by less experienced players who don't go into the strategy or micromanagement so much.

My strategy for lower difficulties (just won a SV with Poland in 1931 on Empreror with that approach, probably had a good start though) might be called "Great Library Trampolining"
. It is definitely not a good idea on Immortal/Deity

1. Build Monument, go Liberty
2. Then settler
3. Free worker please from social
4. Build Great Library, make sure you have Calendar researched by the time the college is built so that...
5. You can pick Philosophy for your Free Tech from building that wonder. This moves you into the Classical Era and lowers the cost of other techs, and gives you a free Social policy as Poland...
6. Philosophy unlocks the building of NC, might as well do it now while you still have one city
7. Now start expanding, research drama and poetry next so you can make the jump to Theology afterward, now you're in the Medieval Era and it's not even turn 90..
8. Now backtrack and get the nice stuff like Civil Service etc.

On deity though you can't beat the AI to Great Library no matter what and you need to settle your cities quick or all the spots will be taken. So you might have 3 or 4 cities but only one or two libraries and no wonders, at the same number of turns you'd have one city with GL + NC on the other strat..

Click to expand...

On emperor you can still steal CS workers around turn 30.

Unless you go full liberty you can never have enough workers imo

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk