(BNW) Some beginner questions

therealmadbone

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 8, 2009
Messages
12
Location
Denmark
I have some basic questions that I hope you can help me with. I have played all the way since Civ1 and extensively with Civ4 but I think I might be “stuck” in some of the old game mechanics when trying to play Civ5 (BNW).

I have started a Chieftain game just to try and get an understanding of how the game works but if you could help with these questions that would be appreciated:

1. I play on a Standard map (continents) with 8 AI players and 16 CS. In Civ4 to me it was all about expansion and large empires of 30-40 cities was not unusual. With this style of play I went Liberty – but how many cities should I actually aim for given the different penalties ? In my current game I have 8 cities but I could easily build a few more or conquer some – will the benefits be better than the penalties ?

2. How should I manage my cities – is it all about food and growth so setting all to that default ? Or do you mix so some have food focus and other perhaps have production ? And are these kept for the duration of the game or do you switch a lot ?

3. Are there any general rules of thumb of how much research I should have at a given time – and what is considered good/fast to be able to stay ahead or compete on harder difficulties ?

4. War Mongering. Perhaps it is due to my low level difficulty test game – but I have a hard time provoking any AI’s to DoW me. Is the War Mongering penalty anything that should be “feared” or should I just destroy those AI’s I want and accept that is the case ? (I know that any unmet Civ’s will not have the relationship penalty towards me)

5. I find it hard to ally CS early in the game since my economy is not that good but the amounts required are still the same (as far as I recall). Ofcourse there is the occassional quest or barbarian that can be used but getting an CS to be a long time ally – is there any good tricks to use ?

Thanks for any help you can offer :)
 
1. If you want optimal play and fast finish times, 4 city tradition is the way to go. Whether you want to expand past 8 cities with Liberty would probably depend on what the turn number is--will new cities have time to exceed their 5% tech penalty and be worth the unhappiness and increased national wonder cost? Alternatively, you could conquer cities if it's later in the game, since puppets don't add to policy and NW costs, but make sure that they generate enough science to make up for the higher tech costs.
2. If you're going 4-city tradition, then yes, growth is all-important. More population means more science. With wide liberty play, growth is still important, but I'd advise striking a balance between food and production, since if you grow too fast you run into happiness problems.
3. I think a good benchmark is Education by t110-115, and Scientific Theory by before 170. You probably can't do that now because you're a newer player, but you'll get there eventually.
4. The warmonger penalty for declaring war is negligible compared to the penalty for taking cities, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
5. Quests are the best way to get CS in the early game. If you get a barb camp quest nearby, absolutely build units and mobilize to destroy it. Many quests are not difficult to complete but you need some luck--gold is useful to reinforce your alliance after you finish a quest.
 
1. In my three recent games, I played Greece twice and am currently playing Rome now, all on Prince (I am no expert, just a casual Civ player) and won both on Greece and am winning right now using Rome. I am on a standard map with the same setup as you (with Raging Barbarians on because...well, I like it). I tend to keep it small because I just have little luck keeping it all together with more than 10-15 cities and most of those are conquests. I raze cities that have little strategic or resource value and keep my conquered cities as puppets for awhile and phase them into annexed status over time. Not sure about a huge number of cities as I just am not very successful with that on Prince. Only ever made it work once and I still don't know what I did other than take over most of the world in a mad game of kill or be killed.

2. I don't micromanage my cities at all. Probably should but as I said I am a casual gamer and so don't feel much like doing that. Seems to work out overall so long as I don't get too many cities...at least on Prince

3. I try to keep my science up to stay ahead and generally can keep well ahead of all but 1-2 civs which are close behind me. I kind of fill in my research goals by choosing everything at the beginning but after Iron working I start to choose goals from the tech tree and try to keep ahead that way. By this I mean I choose something not too far down the tree that I want (say gunpowder) and then let it research all the techs needed to get to that. Then I choose a new goal.

4. On Prince the AI's do declare war occasionally but not on any grand scale...they end up being border clashes more than anything. I find they are more violent to each other on Prince than they are to me. I end up going to war with them mostly to protect allied city states like I did recently and took out two civs, with fairly minimal troops. Regarding the penalties, it depends on your style of play. It does affect things when trying to do diplomatic things.

5. Using caravans and cargo ships is the way to get money coming in I find on Prince anyway. Without doing so you end up being rather cash strapped. With doing this I frequently end up with lots of money to buy my way through upgrades, improvements, gifts to city states for influence. I can keep influence up easily with money if you have lots of it and the only way I can do this is with trade routes.

I am just a casual player of BNW. Been playing Civ since the beginning (the original Civ) but never got to the same level as the real hardcore players. But I find that doing these sort of things tend to work out fairly well for me. I know I will have to change my strategies to go above Prince but doing stuff like I mentioned above works pretty well on that level and certainly should work on Chieftain.
 
on standard map size it's not possible to have 40 cities, I think, before you run out of global happiness.

I haven't played civ4 before, but I don't think there's a happiness aspect that you need to manage. I think 8 cities is a bit too much even for liberty, because it will hinder you on some of the national wonders. But late game I think your science/production will be through the roof.

3. Beakers per turn should be higher than turn number by T150. try to hit the research labs before 250.

4. DoW the AI if you want to go domination, it's better to get a free round of shooting. On prince in my first game I just took everyone out with Keshiks, but it's still good to get friends to sell luxes or trade luxes with. Eventually you'll still go denounce and kill them.

5. early game CS allies come by completing quests, hooking up resources etc. there's not much point sinking gold into CS unless you have points into patronage tree.
 
5. early game CS allies come by completing quests, hooking up resources etc. there's not much point sinking gold into CS unless you have points into patronage tree.

Yes, that is true. In my current game with Rome, all early alliances with CS's came from quests and resource hookups or trade routes. I only have used gold to shore up some CS relationships in the mid game. And I do have points in patronage so it helps keep their support around longer. I've taken a liking to playing the World Congress/UN stuff so I need their delegate support.

That's the beauty of this game. You can play it with a different style than someone else.
 
A possible tip; as you tech up, keep a watch on techs and SPolicies that yield Happyness buildings, and slot them into your building order as needed !
You want/need to drop a city somewhere; and if you have a few Happy buildings yet unbuilt, time the buildings to come on-line on the turn before your setteler gets where its going, to take a 'happy' boost when you need it !
Now with a new city planted, you'll have some happy buildings up your sleeve, ready to go; to push forward your Realm .
 
on standard map size it's not possible to have 40 cities, I think, before you run out of global happiness.

Technically possible--with Meritocracy and Ceremonial Burial you're down to 1.5 global unhappiness per city. Protectionism and all luxes, including unique CS luxes, will net you well over 60 global happiness. So yes, it's possible to have 40 cities and still be happy. Is it a good idea? Of course not.

5. early game CS allies come by completing quests, hooking up resources etc. there's not much point sinking gold into CS unless you have points into patronage tree.

I buy settlers and CS only.

CS investements pretty much allways pay off in medium run more as buildings/units

tommynt disagrees :D
 
I think what you want to do depends a bit on where you want to take the game. Do you prefer expansion and conquest (go wide) or do you want to go small (and tall) and try for the other victories. Is your objective to be able to beat the game on the highest difficulty?

Chieftain is easy and beyond exploring features and how IUPT and religion works you will not really learn what you need to do on higher levels by playing there.

For your first question about expansion
1, I play wide most of the time and I build as many cities as I can (happiness being my main limiter)
But I want to build the National College early to keep up with science so that limits how many cities I will build. I try to grab really good places with luxuries soon and then maybe pause to build the college. But of course one risks spots being taken by then. However, on higher levels science is crucial and the College is essential.
You may want to do bigger maps if you like expansion.

2. Manage cities. Since science is important you want to make your capital (the city where you build the National College) big so food is really essential. For that reason you may want to go tradition to get growth in the capital (and also happiness) But I like the right side of liberty for expansion as well

3. I keep an eye on the science output of the other civs by scrolling over the score. On higher levels you start behind and I attempt to catch up and stay on top of it

4. Warmongering penalty can be tough if you need to trade for happiness and income. Once you master those and do not have to rely on the other civs you do not have to worry.
So if you go to war - you may want to limit your conquest to only a few cities. Never decimate a civ. Try to see if you can force the civ to give you the city you want in a peace agreement as you do not get penalty for those.

5. Allying city states early is difficult. Quests work. Early on you may be able to clear camps for them and maybe give back workers to get a relationship.
Making them your religion can be helpful.
 
Technically possible--with Meritocracy and Ceremonial Burial you're down to 1.5 global unhappiness per city. Protectionism and all luxes, including unique CS luxes, will net you well over 60 global happiness. So yes, it's possible to have 40 cities and still be happy. Is it a good idea? Of course not.





tommynt disagrees :D

haha we all have different reasons, I just don't find it that compelling to spend 500 gold for 30 turns of alliance unless I'm about to be in a war. It's much better to buy a settler with that gold. I'd also prefer to ally up culture/mercantile CS, not sure if people here have preferences.

Now I recall the calculations I made in another post...yeah 40 cities is possible on paper, but you might actually run out of space or have most of them as puppeted/annexed AI cities. :crazyeye:
 
Thanks a lot for all the useful replies :)

My first chieftain game was easily won (anything else would have been a huge disappointment given my past experience :lol:). Chieftain was only for testing it out and learning a bit about the new stuff before trying higher levels. I will probably give it a go at Prince next before moving to King.

I have always liked expansion in previous Civs and this seems to be the biggest change to me how to handle this - or actually avoid going there.

One more question. Do you pick and choose a few select policies in each "tree" or would you recommend going deep and completing each ?

Thanks again for the advice :)
 
You want to focus and get the finishing bonus on your start up three.
And on higher levels get going on Rationalism as soon as you can
 
You want to focus and get the finishing bonus on your start up three.
And on higher levels get going on Rationalism as soon as you can

This. Rationalism is ridiculously imbalanced, relative to the other policy trees. Try playing with ''save policies'' setting on, and save a few policies for rushing down rationalism as soon as you hit renaissance. Enjoy the cruise control win from there.
 
I dunno, in my view, BNW strongly discourages spamming cities like I used to in CIV 2.
I have hard time getting past 8.
 
is it viable to delay culture before rationalism?
say, not running artist guilds after you've filled tradition?

Yes, but realistically if you manage to finish tradition early there's always the option of getting a bit of piety or patronage+consulates depending on the situation. If you don't plan on having a lot of culture, then planning out social policy timings is good. It also depends on if you finished the first tree early because of oracle or because of cultural CS allies.

However, I do think working writer slots are quite useful, since you have places to put your works, unlike the artists.

This is also one of the reasons that Poland is ridongculously strong. Their timing with free policies and ideologies is often underestimated.
 
Why would you want rationalism in cultural victories?

I thought tradition+1 or 2 patronage policies+Opening exploration+Aesthics+Freedom was the right way.
 
Every victory is helped by rapid teching. The quicker you research hotels, Internet, etc., the faster your culture victory. The only exception is sacred site cheese, where you really only need to tech philosophy and maybe theology, and don't need any social policies after you take Reformation. Just spam cities and religious buildings.
 
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