Things you wish you'd known before your first BNW game

Matthew. said:
To add to 2--if you want a religion and your Civ doesn't come with inherent faith bonuses, you will probably need to go Piety. I play on large with 12 Civs and the available religions get taken stupid fast. In G&K you could usually still snag one by T90ish or so; now they start dropping in about half that time.
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Yeah, that was one of the biggest surprises for me. It really makes the piety tree (which I initially evaluated as questionable, since it contains little in the way of what I consider the most important things to be drawing from an early SP tree, like happiness) considerably more attractive. I'm not game-smart enough to know if it's actually good, but it's more useful than I would have guessed.

The other big thing I'd wish I'd known is that the end-game ideologies are at least as much about the global politics that go into who has each one as they are about the actual bonuses inside of them. You give up a LOT more by going into an unpopular ideology (especially one that's favored by tourism leaders) than you gain by picking one that's maybe slightly better for what you're planning. This is especially true given that, despite each being allegedly less-well-suited for certain victory types, there's stuff in most of them for most strategies.
 
Paradigne said:
Just because (as Venice) you CAN get every city state, does not mean you SHOULD get every city-state.
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You might even want to get the first one. 800 gold and 60 influence with a cultural or religious city state that early in the game can also be very valuable. Having said that, in my latest Venice game I still snagged the city state, it had a new luxury and one of the Faith Natural Wonders within its borders...

Also Venice:
If you care about your religion, protect Venice from Great Prophets at all costs. If it is flipped and your 12 or so trade routes start spreading someone else's religion, there is no way back.
 
Never use cargo ships if you have no naval units, especially if you purchased them all with gold instead of building them (Self face-palm) :lol:
 
Qoma said:
As someone who has bought but has not been able to play BNW yet, this thread has been amazing. Please keep going, everyone! :)
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Glad to be of assistance! I too had to wait for a while to play after buying, but clearly I was wrong when I thought that I already knew everything ;)

An additional one:

18. Metal Casting is your friend. Build Workshops in your second and third cities ASAP. Those hammer-boosting Caravans to your capital will make the difference between getting a key Wonder before the AI and just missing out.
 
Unhappiness is really bad for you. Don't go unhappy if you can avoid it. Way more painful than in G&K.

Cheers.
 
19. Gold is a bee-beautiful bee :mischief:

20. Culture is REALLY hard to get by.

21. Artists are useless early on, (primarily without Cathedrals).
 
23. Similar to the point about happiness, think long and hard before spending precious hammers or gold on Settlers. Do you need that 6th city enough for it to be worth the costs?
 
25. Legalism and four free aqueducts work for city-states you buy with merchants of Venice, doesn't apply to regular puppets, it seems like the bought city-states are first annexed, applied those bonuses, and then puppeted back.

26. Tradition is still better for Venice than Liberty, the 2 free merchant of Venice are red herrings.
 
you cant build caravans or cargo ship if you hit the trade route cap, so if you want to change from a land to sea route you have to disband and WAIT the construction time, to me is just stupid.
 
I've found that it's way more important in BNW to have at least one extremely high food city. This is because you want to run a lot more specialist than in G&K. The musicians artists and writers all have their own separate GPP progress bar meaning the first of each of them cost a 100 second 200 and so on without impacting the shared GPP progress of your scientists engineers and merchants. This means that since there's no tradeoff on cultural great people generation (you're not giving up scientist gpp progress) you really need the food to be able to support all those various specialists.

The alternative is neglecting these specialists for the early and mid game and adjusting to the fact that your tourism is going to be very poor later on. If you go this route you have to either suck up to the other civs ideologically by choosing an ideology that wont give you massive unhappiness from other civ's pressure or go kill them before/when this become an issue. You can usually guess what ideology civs will go based on their victory condition and flavor. For example Ramesses pushing for cultural victory is probably going to go freedom etc.
 
Matthew. said:
To add to 2--if you want a religion and your Civ doesn't come with inherent faith bonuses, you will probably need to go Piety. I play on large with 12 Civs and the available religions get taken stupid fast. In G&K you could usually still snag one by T90ish or so; now they start dropping in about half that time.

16. Great writers, artists, and musicians are all on separate counters from each other and from GS's, GE's, and GM's (those are still on the same counter like in G&K). This essentially means that if you have the workers available, there is no reason not to be generating culture GP. At the very least they will give you more policies which in turn will help with whatever victory you are pursuing.

17. If you hover your mouse over the "rising slowly" area on the influence chart, it will give a rough estimate of when you will overtake that Civ with tourism. If the opposing Civ has way too much culture per turn you will likely either need to 1. culture bomb with a lot of musician tours, 2. declare war and personally remove their CPT or 3. pursue a different victory. It isn't like science where you will "win eventually" as long as you keep clicking next turn.
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I didn't know the game gave you that information for the culture victory! That will be very useful in my current game. Thanks!
 
Great thread.

27. Trade routes can generate a solid amount of science in the early game and are the only sure way to earn gold in the early game.

28. Great Musicians cannot enter a Civ's territory without open borders or war. (Not sure if you can use their ability during war).

29. Hidden antiquity sites are only useful for cultural victories, and only then if you have a lot of cities - I'd say at least 6 developed cities. Otherwise you won't have room for all the extra artifacts, assuming you got to Archaeology early (which you did because you're going for a cultural victory).

30. You don't want the Shoshone as neighbors.

31. City states matter Big Time because of diplomatic victories. Other Civs won't seem to help if one Civ dominates CS alliances, so it's up to you to stop their victory. Watch the alliance situation carefully lest one Civ begins to dominate and threatens a victory.

32. Indonesia AI doesn't do a good job of founding cities to get those bonus resources, so don't be surprised if you never see Cloves, etc to trade. If you notice them found a city on another continent, trade immediately to get that new resource before someone else does.
 
33. NEVER cultivate a relationship with the neighbor of The Zulus.

34. Keep OB and TRs active for the tourism bonus.

35. Never build a Caravan when there is fog/barbs between its endpoints.

36. Piety is ruined by the change in Mandate of Heaven (previously OP, but still...) and the 'gain your rivals Pantheon bonus' policy (useless unless your religion is weak in which case you shouldn't be using Piety)

37. Casimir and Shaka are worse than even Hiawatha! :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
Never cancel polands free policy option. You wont be able to go back.

LOS is key in early trade protection. Hills, choke points, and the occasional sentry can easily be sustainable for the routes.

Don't pop early great artists, unless you're sure you need the culture Vic. 2-3 golden age triggers on top a natural + Taj Mahal = 50-60 turns of dominance mid game
 
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