Really need help with the game

Rhaegar7 said:

Actually - you're doing it right. Keep at it and we'll have some epic deity battles in no time!

No, seriously - the great thing about Civ5 is that it rewards the thinking that you do. Keep thinking and don't worry too much about it. That's the fun of it really.

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LOL. Keep thinking and not to worry much about it? So you want me to think without thinking about it?

The nagging feeling is still there. I played another game as Shaka and got destroyed again since I tried culture and hoarding masterpieces. I have a feeling that I think I would not be playing culture/diplomatic civ until I really master the game. I am planning a game on the largest map however I could not find the sweetspot for the game pace. I always worry about techs advancing so fast that I would not be able to take advantage of UUs or not even get a chance to use them.

You know what i mean! I'm an old school strategy player and even though I started playing Civ 5 very late I progressed to immortal very rapidly exactly because of my habit of spending extraordinarily long periods of time thinking on what might seem mundane turns. And I had and am still having a ton of fun playing like that, because the game doesn't fail to reward it later on.

Rhaegar7 said:

You know what i mean! I'm an old school strategy player and even though I started playing Civ 5 very late I progressed to immortal very rapidly exactly because of my habit of spending extraordinarily long periods of time thinking on what might seem mundane turns. And I had and am still having a ton of fun playing like that, because the game doesn't fail to reward it later on.

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I think I realize what my problem is. Other than overthinking, I there are times when I just let the turn progress without thinking much about stuff. I mean when I am excited about something like a wonder finishing, I tend to just skip the turns and not really optimize each and every turn and making sure that I have done what I should have done in a particular turn.

If there is an improvement to my game, I think its that now I am careful about what I build in cities and my tile improvements. My only problem is determining when it is good to build something or not.

Yes.. every turn counts! Don't even automate your workers. Think about everything. (and automating your workers is not good for the reason that they tend to start building trading posts after it's available and more often than not farms are way more useful than trading posts; mines are usually too; having a 1.875 modifier from a market/bank/commerce1 and the ability to build them on jungle and getting +1 science later complicates things a lot though)

This is not really a problem. You're supposed to give it some thought. It's part of the game and it's fun. I always give some thought to each world wonder I can build even though I'd usually have to decide against it. (as the risk of missing it by 1-2 turns is awful and with 7+ AI on a high difficulty it's not really worth it - you have to play for a timed key wonder - can't build them all)

Most of my thinking is usually along the lines - should i continue teching peacefully or prepare for war.. (more often than not - Chivalry or Theology? Fast 4 knights and go kill the annoying in-your-face bases or fast grand temple and prepare for a later Just War on the whole continent?) and I do have a bit of a weakness in that regard as I delay going to war a bit too long and then regret it.

I'll say it one more time. You're supposed to be giving some thought to each turn. That's what makes a good game. And Civ 5 is a really good game in that regard as it rewards all the thinking that you do no matter how insignificant it might seem at first. I love this game precisely for this very reason.

Now I am playing as the zulu and so far I managed to take around 4 american cities and I razed one when france tried to build close to me. I am just sorting out my troops and I got around 1 compo bowman, 2 catapults, 2 swordsman and a spearman. One of my biggest mistake was I forgot to build a barracks (forgot the name of the zulu UB). I think its a great progress for me since I increased the difficulty to prince.

I feel like I am doing a lot of things wrong in the way I play however I can't see the things I have done wrong as of the moment. As for worker automation, I either manual or kill off the unneeded worker. I just have problems at times on how to use my workers wisely especially when there are tiles to improve but my city does not have enough people to work on it yet. One other thing that confuses me is whether I should follow the advisors when it comes to research, buildings and other stuff?

I am starting to make a habit of turning on the yield icons even though it crowds the map since I think in this game I have been placing more effective cities. Aside from the resources I want to get, how do I determine which tile is a best tile for a city?

Your last question (the tiles) is a relatively complecated one.

It really depends on priorities and play style. I too play with yield tiles on so to know what the heck I am trying to improve next

Dont kill your workers, the improvement time for each hex is huge (IMHO at least) and you eventually are going to need them later to build roads/railroads or change some improvements where strategics are revealed. Even when the city currently cant support more people it will at sometime when it grows. Its best to have as many tiles as possible ready before hand than having a citizen work an unimproved tile. Improve what you think crucial and then start on the secondaries.

Generally speaking (and since you are worried about science) food is the N#1 commodity for a city. In order to growth and have the workforce to work more tiles you need farms. Lots of farms. Population also is important for science because as it has been posted the science boosting buildings are pop dependent.

In general a city should have lots of farming space (grasslands/or plains), production tiles (preferably hills but forests will do somewhat) and with the advent of BNW (to me that was always the case but anyway) some sea tiles for sea trade and naval build up.A couple of lux also wont hurt since you can trade or keep those for happiness. Strategics in the early game are gamble since you don't see them.
Try to think before hand what will your new city be about: Will it have great growth if you build lots of farms? Will it have enough hammers due to hills? Is it a totally worthless place but it has Eldorado and would serve as military base?

Dont let the game overwhelm you. I have been playing games for 26 years (including all the civ series) and I started this one on settler just because I wanted a relaxed learning curve.6 months onto the game and only now I feel comfortable playing in the higher difficulties. Play at the difficulty you enjoy there is none rushing you.

Towerbooks3192 said:

Now I am playing as the zulu and so far I managed to take around 4 american cities and I razed one when france tried to build close to me. I am just sorting out my troops and I got around 1 compo bowman, 2 catapults, 2 swordsman and a spearman. One of my biggest mistake was I forgot to build a barracks (forgot the name of the zulu UB). I think its a great progress for me since I increased the difficulty to prince.

I feel like I am doing a lot of things wrong in the way I play however I can't see the things I have done wrong as of the moment. As for worker automation, I either manual or kill off the unneeded worker. I just have problems at times on how to use my workers wisely especially when there are tiles to improve but my city does not have enough people to work on it yet. One other thing that confuses me is whether I should follow the advisors when it comes to research, buildings and other stuff?

I am starting to make a habit of turning on the yield icons even though it crowds the map since I think in this game I have been placing more effective cities. Aside from the resources I want to get, how do I determine which tile is a best tile for a city?

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the advisors!

You should be playing with all yield icons + grid. It would be rather awkward not to. (I remember that after I finally found out about those I immediately improved my game tons.)

Luxuries are not as important as you might think (you should still improve them of course, but then sell them as actually the early happiness is even bad for you - delaying the first golden age until you actually have some gold/production/culture going is a good strategy). Early on you should farm all the tiles next to fresh water (I guess they all show as flood plains if i'm not mistaken) and usually get Civil Service asap. Food is generally the most important thing in this game and you can't go wrong with many farms, however boring it might seem. That wasn't the case in Alpha Centauri where forests were a good option, but here you should only build the occasional lumber mill if it you already have a significant food surplus (or are playing a specific forest-friendly civ) and the 1-2 production bonus won't be too insignificant. For this very reason the best wonders to go after are The Hanging Gardens and Petra as those are the only ones that give you food bonuses (and Petra is just too damn awesome on general principles) and they're not targeted by the AI or even by most human players.

If you don't focus on food early you might just forget about specialists and this is generally not a good thing and not very fun anyway.

The main exception to the rule is your main coastal city which benefits greatly from 1-3 manufactories asap as it gets 2+ food from each water tile, but no production, and having no palace to speed things up means that you really need the production bonus.



I have one advice that goes against general principles as far as Civ games go. Don't assume that mass expanding is so good by default. This game has employed huge detriments to expansion - you have -3 production/gold/culture in your expansions, so they are much less useful than your capital early on and the incredible penalty to your policies is not worth it. In fact I'd advice most players to learn how to patiently stay on one city and tech (going tradition ofc) until they are completely sure what the best expo would be. And it turns out the best expo is very often a coastal city state and those tend to wait patiently for you to get them while building the buildings which you'd need anyway. 2 very tall cities and a defensive/diplomatic game with a focus on allying a lot of city states is a good strategy that will help you learn the mechanics, the diplomatics and late game mechanics. Still, you'd usually have to go to war to get 1-2 annoying cities out of your close proximity and possibly negotiate a good peace treaty deal after you've pushed your enemy back.

And after you learn that learning to play with more agressive civilizations is in order, but I'd still advice against having more than 3 or at most 4 real cities (as opposed to puppeted). Either puppet ot raze your way forward. It turns out that not all additional cities are a benefit. More often than not they can be a detriment lagging your policies and happiness and stretching you out too thin.

And finally - winning a diplomatic victory is easier than you might think even on higher difficulties. The AI doesn't seem to be prepared at all with how to deal with that. So keep your spies at work, do the city quests, spread your religion and vote yourself to victory at emperor. (and probably nuking the hell out of your annoying neighbours on general principle while you're waiting for it) I haven't played much at immortal yet, but I suspect it's not too different there anyway.

Generally speaking even with abundant food, heavy specialist use kind of demands freedom though. I have trouble keeping their happiness and growth deficiency on other forms of Government, just saying.

For this reason I'd advice players to start with India. Other than that.. with precise play you should be able to keep up with your 50citizen capital although I admit it might not be always that easy. Just think about what Monarchy does to your tall games though.. And if you think 50 is a bit much, I've gotten games with India to 80+. Just saying..

Not that it helps that much, but the +2 production per unemployed citizen (not counting modifiers) is actually not bad.

Freedom is surpisingly not that useful even for tall empires. +8food/happiness for your 1-2 tall cities is pretty much worthless so late in the game, while 2 points in autocracy will net you at least 60gold/turn in saved military expenses and a 1/3 reduction in buying units.. Which translates into lots and lots of nukes.. Just sayin..

And actually all of the autocracy policies are pretty good, while freedom will probably be more useful at BNW then it is in G&K. I've even gotten into the habit of turning off cultural victory, because I don't like the game ending just when I start a total war!

Yeah but freedom is not a stand alone tree. It needs rationalism and by that those specialist slots are producing science as well. In fact only with freedom I was capable of braking the thousand in beakers per turn (barring my one single autocratic game, but having the entire planet in gulags doesnt count ) Haven't tried the others yet in BNW.
I was gunning for a whatever non domination vic, and surprise I ended with a cultural one.

I too believe that India is one great civ and now it some minor direct and some great indirect buffs.

Pop in the 80s without mods? Wow! The largest I ever had was 52 me thinks.

I played india a long time ago and I forgot how they are. I think I played it with GnK plus pick goddess of love as pantheon. One of my other concerns is, are the civs stuck to a particular playstyle like lets say its advised that Austria should not go warmongering or a warmongering civ could not aspire to play for a culture/diplo victory and only use their war mongering UA as a defensively to achieve culture/diplo victory?

One more thing. How do I determine city specialization like a city only for units or wonders? I still haven't got the chance to really decide which city would be which?