Tips for playing on King?

Hey guys, I'm a long time civ player but never really got super into it and as a result haven't ever really beaten AI on harder than prince.

I started playing on king in brave new world and have been having some trouble that I was hoping you guys could help me with.

First of all, in previous cive games I generally like to expand a lot early on however I've found that in Civ V I can never support more than 3 or 4 cities due to unhappiness which will just stunt the growth of all of my cities and screw me over. Is there a way to realistically build larger empires early on or is it best to build only 3 or 4 cities until happiness is less of an issue? The same goes for conquering other cities, whenever I kill someone I feel like I need to just puppet them to keep my happiness under control.

Second question is how do you siege cities effectively in BNW? It seems infinitely harder than when I played vanilla Civ 5. Even with multiple siege units a normal city kills them in 2 turns and if the AI targets them it makes the siege very difficult. I feel like I need about 4 or 5 siege units and 4 or 5 infantry to take even cities with less defensive power. Same goes with my defense, I had a 125 defense capital in the beginning of the modern age, china declared war on me and send a huge army to it and he couldn't even touch me.

Third, any tips for culture victories? I've been going for them basically every game playing as Poland. Its turn 373 (standard pace) and i ahve 144 tourism. Is that low? I'm familiar with most civs, popular with a few, and influential on one but with a few im only exotic. I've been focusing on tourism all game not sure if i'm just doing a bad job.

Lastly, religion. I never played gods and kings so this is new to me. I find that I can spread my religion very well early on but later in the game I just get overwhelmed. SOmehow the romans have 65 pressure on my border cities whereas I'm putting 30ish on their cities. Not sure how to get more pressure from religion?

Thanks.

Expand slow and steady. It is hard to impossible to expand in rapid fashion in BNW. Once you get a few cities and luxes hooked up, you can expand fast. That is the key, your 2nd and 3rd city should be for new luxes.

Meat shields, you need to send in some meat before you send in the siges units. In this, medic helps on your meat. that way they heal every turn no matter what. Send in the meat, city hits meat, send in your siege units. Do not do this light, take a lot of military so you have few too no losses.

144 seems very good to me.

Religion is a pressure based game. You see the large +65 pressure because he spreads right. Do not send GP or missionarys's to single cities. It will not work! Build pressure form your capitol out. The more cities that that are in the 10 tile range of the capitol the better. Try and do a circle settlement for this reason. *imho*. When spreading to your neighbors, closest to you 1st and expand outwards from there. If you do this and focus on it , you should have massive pressure.

Point on religion that I see. If you are 4th -7th on religion, you have an uphill battle. Sometimes it is just better to do your own cities and forget the spread. The pressure they exert just cannot be overcome.

I think this should work on King - It seems ok on immortal

Go Liberty and get the 2nd settler from that; then build a settler and perhaps buy one as well. settle each by a luxury.

I try for religion and usually get one - focus on happiness - the river one was good in G&K but perhaps there are better ones now rivers don't give gold. Build a shrine in each city; then library then build the national college asap; buy tiles to improve happy; on king you should get the pyramids to get worker to build quick so you can get improvements up. Focus on happy resources or things you can sell. Now consider patronage to befriend CS with happy resources; or plan ahead and go for the gold policy- big ben order etc. Pump out settlers from your capital. You only need 5 real cities the rest can be set to stagnate - connect all by road or sea for the liberty happy. Specialise cities for Great people; building military; building navy etc. then march 6 or 7 units round the map taking puppets - build a trading post on every farm to restrict growth and always leave at least one city per beat up civ - build settlers whenever you have 6 happy - and get the forbidden palace if you have a lot of puppets

It is probably best to only really build new cities on luxury resources you don't have yet or realize early thatyou want to expand and make sure you have colosseums lined up. Sometimes you have to eat a bit of unhappiness early if you want to landgrab. Religion also helps greatly with happiness beliefs. As for conquered cities yeah probablyonly aannex capitals if you can afford it, puppet or raze the rest. You can always annexlater if yyou want when you can afford to build courthouses.

Are you behind in tech? If you'rebehind by an era cities can really chew you up . I usually just have a couple melee, a couple ranged and then six seven or eight siege units depending on how far I need to push and if they're surrounded by rough terrain.

Getting the reformation belief which gives tourism for faith purchased buildings can be nice. Other than that just try to get a tech lead so you can get tourism wonders and theme them appropriately. If you're the first to get an ideology get order because then more civs will likely follow order and there's a tenet which will increase tourist pressure on them. Other than that make sure you have open borders with everyone, try to get as many people followingyour religion , and focus your trade routes and great artists on the civs with the highest cultureddefense.

Pressure will generate from how many cities in a region follow your religion. Trade routes also apply pressure so you can even out influence a holy city if you concentrate most of your trade there . Then your last enhancer belief can also influence how much pressure you exude. Grand temple doubles pressure from your holy city.

Hope at least some of that was helpful?

McDaniels said:

Hey guys, I'm a long time civ player but never really got super into it and as a result haven't ever really beaten AI on harder than prince.

I started playing on king in brave new world and have been having some trouble that I was hoping you guys could help me with.

First of all, in previous cive games I generally like to expand a lot early on however I've found that in Civ V I can never support more than 3 or 4 cities due to unhappiness which will just stunt the growth of all of my cities and screw me over. Is there a way to realistically build larger empires early on or is it best to build only 3 or 4 cities until happiness is less of an issue? The same goes for conquering other cities, whenever I kill someone I feel like I need to just puppet them to keep my happiness under control.

Second question is how do you siege cities effectively in BNW? It seems infinitely harder than when I played vanilla Civ 5. Even with multiple siege units a normal city kills them in 2 turns and if the AI targets them it makes the siege very difficult. I feel like I need about 4 or 5 siege units and 4 or 5 infantry to take even cities with less defensive power. Same goes with my defense, I had a 125 defense capital in the beginning of the modern age, china declared war on me and send a huge army to it and he couldn't even touch me.

Third, any tips for culture victories? I've been going for them basically every game playing as Poland. Its turn 373 (standard pace) and i ahve 144 tourism. Is that low? I'm familiar with most civs, popular with a few, and influential on one but with a few im only exotic. I've been focusing on tourism all game not sure if i'm just doing a bad job.

Lastly, religion. I never played gods and kings so this is new to me. I find that I can spread my religion very well early on but later in the game I just get overwhelmed. SOmehow the romans have 65 pressure on my border cities whereas I'm putting 30ish on their cities. Not sure how to get more pressure from religion?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

For expansion, you can still expand as large as you want, just make sure your cities are solid before doing so and you have surplus happiness. My personal playstyle is to leave lots of space between cities so each can have its 3 tile radius (radii? whatever the word is). This lets cities grow very large. I also apply it to capturing cities. Unless the city has wonders or is very well off, I will raze it. Usually any good tiles it works will be worked by the neighbor smushed next to it. Again I play on emperor, so the deity guys may be smacking their foreheads right now on how "dude leaves too much space between cities". You do well by puppeting, at least initially. I usually will puppet all, and only annex if I absolutely need to rush buy a unit, or it has amazing production and I want to build a wonder there. I will also annex a high population city if I have the gold to immediately buy a courthouse, as that adds net happiness.

As for sieges, make sure you take pillaging into effect. The healing you get from pillaging a tile usually will let that unit absorb another shot. For example, in an ideal siege, you move 3 catapults (or their upgraded equivalents) to hills 2 tiles away. Thats turn 1. THe city hits one of them. On your next turn, you pillage with that one and set it up. The other two set up and fire on the city. If you have archers, they fire too, melee units do not attack, but get next to the city. The city will then fire again. If it hits the 1st catapult that pillaged, pull it back and heal it, then fire with the other two. When they are hit, pillage and then move them. When the city gets within low health THEN attack with the melee units. If you attack with them early, they take damage from attacking the city, then the city may fire on them killing them. There is the option though of attacking at full health with a melee unit, then healing by pillaging.

I know what youre thinking... If I ravage the landscape will I even WANT the city afterwards? Well as I mentioned above I raze a lot of cities, so often I dont care that theyre pillaged. Even If I intend to take it for my own after, I will still pillage because crops can be regrown and mines repaired in not too long a time and if it helps me take a city I otherwise couldnt without pillaging health then its worth the tradeoff. Besides if for some reason the attack fails, that city will be out of commission for your enemy for a while.

Also make sure you kill all the units outside of city boarders before going in. Move to the 3rd tile out and attack units in the 2nd tile out or shoot in if you have ranged units. The AI usually will come after you.

Lastly, don't try to attack a city that is far beyond your ability to take. If the city itself can one shot your units, and an archer in the city drastically weakens your units, then you should only attack the city if you are very desperate, and have waves of expendable soldiers.

As for your religion problems, have you tried using a great prophet to stamp out early enemy religions. Using a great prophet removes all enemy religion in a city and puts in yours. As long as you have the military power to back up a probable DOW, send in your great prophet to their holy city and convert it. You then have 3 more uses, so go for their next 3 largest cities. Even if this doesn't completely root it out, it should hobble them and give you a long time to increase your lead.

I am a long time King Player but i moved up to Emperor and I am doing well so i hope my tips can help you out.

1) Large empires can be hard to maintain because of happiness issues along with delaying important Wonders like National College, Epic etc etc. Unless your Civ has a UB or a UA that is good for mass expansion like Egypt's Burial Tomb, Maya's Pyramids, it is generally advisable to stay small at the start. A rule of thumb for expansion is at least a new unique lux though for BNW, a coastal city is also important.
As for early conquests, i would say raze every city unless it's location is so good that you must have it. Take only the capital. Puppet and annex once resistance is over to get the courthouse. Happiness is brutal early game.
You might want to consider a religious dimension to your gameplay. Certain beliefs and religious buildings gives happiness which helps you with expansion.

2) There is a dramatic change to sieging dynamics from Vanilla. The bad old days of Swordmen rushes are over as Cities now has Health and Defense. Cities in general are harder to take. Take the defense value of the city as if it is a unit. If it is much higher than your highest tech military (i.e a 34 def city against pikeman 16 str), then the city is going to destroy you as it is like Rifleman against Pikes.
A common strategy is taking 4-6 Archers/C.Bow/X-Bow and a horse unit. Keep your house unit out of range and pelt the city with your range units. Early siege units are usually not worth it as they take too long to reach and are vulnerable but if you can bring one, do it but support it well. If you bring melee, just fortify outside the city. Don't attack unless you can take the city because it is really painful.
Once Artillery hits the field, their 3 range ability makes sieging too easy. BTW if you do not know, you can take cities with ships. Coastal Cities can easily be ruined by Frigate spam followed by ironclad smash. So if the land approach is tough, do it by sea!

3) That is low actually. Here are a few tips because Culture Victory is pretty flexible.
-> Theming Works. Some wonders (and Museums) allow you to group Great Works so they give a bonus on top of the intrinsic tourism. Hover your mouse over the "+0" and it will tell you what is the requisite for getting the bonus. Click the trade works tab to trade for Great Works to fulfill theming bonus.
-> Plan your research routes in order to snag the Cultural Wonders. Theming is important and many of these wonders come with free writers/artists/musicians.
-> Piety might be worth investing in as one of the reformation beliefs give +2 tourism for each religious building purchased by faith. One of the beliefs also give Hermitage a +5 tourism.
-> Open Aesthetics at least. 25% increase generation for GW/GA/GM is good. The rest of the policies are decent but finishing it allows you to faith purchase which ties in well with Piety.
-> You can increase the effect of your tourism output with other Civs. A 25% bonus is given for open borders, Trade Routes, Sharing Same Religion and some Ideological effects. Having all four of them active puts the tourism hurt on your opponent!
-> Push for World Fair (or is it Games) that gives the winner 100% tourism output for 20 turns.
-> Do a Great Musician bomb! A GM can sacrifice itself to give a musical tour and it projects the sum of the last 10 turns worth of tourism when the GM was generated onto the targeted Civ along with 20% of that to everyone else. Good for stubborn Cultural Civ.

Religious pressure comes from the number of cities within range that is of a particular religion. Religion is a snowball effect. Let say the Buddhist Celts has one city and Catholic Rome have 10 Cities in range in which all 10 cities are Catholic Majority. These 10 cities will project each of their individual religious pressure on that one Celt City. The Buddhism pressure is minimal as there is only Celt city.
Certain wonders like the Grand Temple increase the religious pressure of your holy City and one of the belief increase the speed of propagation.

Hope these helps!

BNW shifts balance from wide civilizations (many cities) to tall civilization (fewer but better cities). Expansion can be very problematic in the beginning, however king difficulty should still leave you some room for expansion.

Your 1st priority must be science. There are many more "unlocks" now that come with science: diplomatic options, global council, number and range of trade routes etc. Make sure that your capital is growing steadily and has a decent science output. National College has proven to be a must for me.

Don't be too eager to fund new cities. On king, make sure that your capital is defended from barbarians, your neighborhood is thoroughly scouted and the most vital tiles around you are improved.

As Ranall said, you need to get bonus luxuries in order to keep your happiness at bay, therefore your 2nd and 3rd cities need to be placed near luxuries other than your starting one. If it's a little further from your capital, don't be intimidated by it. Don't rush to connect your cities, either. With larger distances, it's not always worth it right away.

Remember that you can earn some gold by intimidating city states. The same way you can get workers. Tradition also seems to be a better choice than liberty. At least for this approach.

I have no problems with warfare in BNW. My standard tactics depends heavily on ranged units. They can jump in, fire and in the upcoming turn, just retreat. When you move 5 ranged units against an undefended city, you will be able to hit it 5 times in the 1st round, 4 times in the 2nd one, 3 times in the 3rd one and so on. Every turn you run away with the unit that took damage from city bombardment. To be 100% safe, when enemy city hits 0 strength, rush it with a cavalry unit. It will always win and survive, even though battle prediction shows that it will be eliminated.

Religion is a bit tricky but more powerful than in GnK nonetheless. If you are near desert or stone, make sure to get your pantheon quickly and earn as much religion as you can. Study piety policy tree. There are some goodies you certainly can afford playing Poland.
It's noteworthy that religion can be spread via trade routes, both incoming and leaving. There are also passive religious beliefs that increase religious pressure. Study them when you fund your own religion. Some are very powerful.

In case of tourism, it's always an issue of comparison. Don't expect it to grow fast until you build hotels and airports. Cant give you any solid numbers because it depends on the type of game you are playing. Your own culture is much more important, because even if you won't dominate with your tourism, you'll be warded towards enemy influence.

Furthermore, remember that your trade routes can work to improve your own cities. Don't be afraid to fuel your growth with trade routes focused on food. Keep in mind that marine trade routes get x2 multiplier to everything. It's important.

Last but not least, try to secure a trade hub for yourself. A trade hub is a city located by the fork of a river. All your trade routes will get x2 bonus for being marine (if you trade via ships ofc) and 1.25x gold for being by a river.



All the above is not a guide to play the most efficient c5 game. These are simple guidelines that should lead to an enjoyable game on king/emperor difficulty. There are also youtube 'let's play' videos you could watch designed for higher difficulties.

It's very hard to rapidly expand in the early game. You have to build up your civilization and try to get as many luxuries as possible before expanding beyond 3-4 cities usually. When conquering a city you can just annex them and build (or rush buy) a courthouse and there's no more unhappiness.

Sieging cities in BNW can be very challenging, yes. You have correctly identified the fact that siege units are an absolute MUST, so keep them as safe as you can. Lead with melee units and, if you think your siege takes too much damage, build barracks etc and get the 'cover' promotions. If you play right the only thing your siege should be susceptible to is range - never end a turn with your siege in line for a melee attack if you can. And don't forget that you can pillage a tile to heal your siege unit without making them have to set up again. Because the AI is pretty stupid it seems to prioritise the lowest HP units to attack. So it's not a bad idea to save some really crappy units for ranged fodder, so they attack the units you don't care about instead of your siege.

I just finished an emperor game with 798 tourism on turn 346 on standard speed. So your tourism is pretty low, yes. How did I get such high tourism? Well my tourism from cities was about 200. It doubled twice. It was doubled because I contributed the most to the international games. The International Games (World Congress proposal) are extremely useful for a cultural victory. When the international games are held, it's a good idea to set ALL your cities to work towards it. If you do this you're all but guaranteed to get first place, which gives you +100% tourism for 20 turns. The other way that I doubled my tourism was by researching The Internet. I managed to research The Internet very early by gathering some great scientists and not using them. Then, when the time was right, I bulbed them to get The Internet. I also saved Oxford University so I could build it at the right time and get The Internet for free. Beeline to The Internet and get as many great scientists as you can to get there as soon as possible. This should really help you. If you can, try to host International Games after you've researched The Internet to maximise your tourism output during it. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but it might actually be better to go for the science focus rather than the culture focus in the World Congress, just to get as many Great Scientist as possible and therefore get The Internet as soon as possible (others will probably disagree with this last bit).

Although they are the two main ways I managed to get that much tourism there were a lot of other ways. It is a given, of course, that cultural wonders are very important, as are the theming bonuses. Aesthetics is also important (although not as much as you might think). I actually filled out Aesthetics quite late in this game because I only decided relatively late on to go for a culture victory. I got a few rationalism techs first, which helped me with great scientists. The final extremely important thing to take in account are modifiers. Having trade routes, sharing religion, and having open borders ALL increase the modifier of tourism output to an enemy civilization. I can't emphasise enough how important that is. I'd also recommend going for Order and making it the world ideology, whilst also trying to get as much happiness as possible. With Order you get a 33% modifier to civs with less happiness than you and another 33% modifier for civs also following Order. Getting as many seats in the World Congress if you can can be very useful, as it allows you to set a world religion to your own one. That gives another +50% tourism in that religion's holy city. Use Great Musicians when the time is right, very near the end of the game, to bomb other civilizations. The give x10 your current tourism output, so it's a good idea to faithbuy them when you are hosting the International Games. And finally, domination is a very good way of collecting lots of great works and cultural wonders you missed out on. I never would have won a cultural victory if i hadn't taken Babylon, which just had a ridiculous amount of wonders.

Religious pressure is spread by proximity to a holy city and trade routes. There may be other factors that I don't know about. If you want to increase pressure, increase trade routes. Either give them to your own cities to maintain your own religion (and also get INSANE food and production bonuses if you use cargo ships) or increase pressure on rival civs by establishing trade routes to them. The national wonder Grand Temple doubles religious pressure eminating from your holy city. Try to get that if you want.

Apologies for the wall of text, and good luck. You don't really need to do all of these things to win on King, but it can't hurt.

Wow... amazing responses.

So I just finished my game as Poland. By turn 400ish I had 500 tourism and was rising quite nicely with all civs however by about turn 420 greece wont he game with a diplomatic victory which was odd. I voted for him not knowing that was going to end the game. Somehow he has 22 delegates with only a score of 800 compared to mine of 1300 and rome of 1800. I may have been able to win if it didn't end like that because I was friendly with almost everyone and had really nice tourism I think.

I did rush piety early on for the reformation belief tot tourism. I've been heavily emphasizing religion early and usually get first religion by getting stoenhenge. I get pagodas and 2 gold from each follower city. I try to get a second religious building via enhanced religion if i can but usually the AI takes those early on.

I wasn't really sure how themeing worked this game and didnt realize I could move my great works around so I'll try doing that next game.

Thanks for all of the advice guys hopefully I'll be able to beat king next game

Greece bought up all the city states, that's how he got all the delegates. Probably went patronage too. The world Congress can definitely sneak up on you

Greece = City State Ho. That is why he had so many. I do salute you voting for him though.

Score doesn't affect how many delegates you have. You get extra delegates primarily by allying with City-States, but also by having the World Religion in the majority of your cities, adopting the World Ideology, being the host (initially by finding all other civilizations and researching printing press first), building certain wonders (the Forbidden palace and possibly more that I can't remember), and being first or second for the World Leader vote.

I don't want to create a whole new forum for a very similar topic, but could I ask:
Has the gap between prince and king narrowed, or widened in your opinion/ experience? For me I think it has widened considerably, but not in the proper way; Prince is now a mindnumbingly easy cakewalk were I can screw off as much as I want and still come out the victor, wereas king now seems brutal, as I am beaten to every wonder, tech, and achievement. It also seems that the AI are still incapable of making proper city attacks, which just makes me mad as I have to sit around wallowing in filth and unable to break out or die, like purgatory. I'm getting frustrated as I have to choose between boring victory or boring defeat.

I haven't really been able to tell much of a difference between king and prince other thanthe aAIis better at land grabbing and is more apt to declare war. I haven't focused wonders much but to my surprisethe great libr ary has often been available for a long time

DeutschDachs said:

I haven't really been able to tell much of a difference between king and prince other thanthe aAIis better at land grabbing and is more apt to declare war. I haven't focused wonders much but to my surprisethe great libr ary has often been available for a long time

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Yeah, GL is easy so long as you beeline it. Got it 4 out of 4 king games.

A couple of thoughts.

Sometimes it is clear that your religion is being overrun and sometimes you just have to let it happen. In one of my Emp games, Korea took Piety and a quick religion and just about every imaginable belief to spread religion and built the Great Mosque wonder etc. I think I saw at least 6 missionaries at one time running thru my lands converting my cities and the CS near me and heading south into Poland's lands, almost overpowering his religion. Even my capitol was flipped. No big deal as I just made sure to build the faith buildings from his religion before flipping mine back.

Even though my capitol was flipped, my GP was for my original religion since it was a holy city. I flipped all 4 of my cities and before I had faith to buy a pagoda, new missionaries came and flipped 3 of them back but he left my cap alone and I managed a pagoda there. Now I'll forget religion and just use my faith to buy great people.

For tourism, you could have lots more by turn 374. Put hotels and airports in key cities where they will expand tourism. Get the internet and double it. You can always great musician bomb a stubborn civ or two to increase tourism and lock up your CV. I won two CV's as Venice in the 360's on Emp and certainly am no expert on CV. In one game Harun was close to launching so I was close to losing, but shattered his world with a nuke missile to slow him down.

Make sure you know about and take advantage of theming bonuses. These come into play for buildings that can house more than 1 GW and are quite useful for artifacts once you start filling up museums. It takes some practice and micro to get used to and to get used to trading GW's.

.. neilkaz ..