Quick tips for newer players?

I'm wondering if there is any mileage in a thread of quick tips for newer players. They could just be one-liners of things that you might not think of when new to the game.

One that strikes me is that I've found it useful to set Autosaves to be made every turn, and to save about 200 turns.

This is useful if you miss-click (I find the interface is poor, and it happens to me too often). But you can just go back to the previous turn if there is an Autosave. It's useful when you're learning, too, because if you do something foolish, or because you haven't understood the mechanics of the game you can just go back a turn.

I would never have thought of this if I hadn't seen someone else do it. There are probably plenty of other little useful tips that I (and others) don't know about.

My top 3

1. Don't be afraid to take the fight to the AI
2. Tradition is not the only viable strategy: Liberty and Honor are both good too
3. Have lots of workers and send them to the front line

Those are good, but I should have said that I wasn't thinking of general strategies. There are lots of guides for those, and they are sometimes debatable! I was thinking of things that are much more targeted and specific. I doubt that new players would know that Tradition is "supposed" to be the "standard" strategy. I certainly didn't when I was new.

Just to expand on one of consentient's very good tips above --

One reason for sending workers to the "war zone" is that the AI is programmed to try and capture them in preference to attacking your military units. With careful positioning, you can get an AI unit to capture your worker, kill the AI unit, and get your worker back. You can munch through a lot of AI units that way!

consentient said:

My top 3

1. Don't be afraid to take the fight to the AI Human
2. Tradition is not almost the only viable strategy: Liberty and Honor are both good too very situationnal
3. Have lots of workers and send them to the front line

Click to expand...

Funny how these actual recommendations aren't recommended at all for multiplayer maybe excepted #3 but you can do it so late in the game that it doesn't change really the whole thing...pretty rare to have a large surplus of workers in mp. If the OP jumps someday into mp games just don't follow this

My top 3(both mp/sp)

The early game(approx. 80-100 turns) is important and here what i counsider ''must to do''s to get a good start:

1. Scout-Monument should always be the first 2 builds unless you hit a very fast culture ruin(before starting monument) so you can build a 2nd scout instead(if Tradition).

2. 1,25 worker per city is the magic number in mp. 1,50 for sp.

3. Use internal food trades in the beginning instead of civs trades, unless very specific situations(deity sp, maritime/culture cs attraction)

I'd recommend that you read up on how the many systems and mechanics of the game actually works. Stuff like, how religion works and what you can use it for, what the role of different units are and how the work together, how culture and tourism work, and so on. Guides that explain game mechanics and systems are very useful. I found the civ wiki very interesting too. Their combat strategy guide in particular (link)

Another tip is to always keep in mind "opportunity cost". The true cost of say a unit is not the production cost, but what else you could've done with that production and time.

1. Explore the map ASAP.
2. If warmongering and you think you have enough troops in your army, make 50% more.
3. Never automate workers or scouts.
4. Do at least a minimum amount of micromanaging your cities, for running specialists in particular. The AI default is generally to work food (grow population) when happy, which may not be the best choice if you are trying to conserve happiness for upcoming conquest.
5. Don't always trust the AI choices for tiles to settle.

1. Grow! Farm every freshwater tile (tiles next to oases, lakes, and rivers)
2. Build archers and chariots rather than melee units.
3. Do not overexpand if it delays your infrastructure such as NC or if you do not have happiness to support it.
4. Fewer, but bigger and stronger cities are far better than a plethora of scattered, smaller, weaker ones (unless going sacred sites)
5. Connect your cities. Do not neglect trade routes.
6. Trade away stuff you do not need.
7. Disregard all of the above if you are not playing on deity; you can still win because AIs are useless.
8. If on deity, forward-expanding on a warmonger AI is a thousand years of pain. Avoid if possible unless you are going domination.

1. Don't sell Ghandi your uranium.

#1 Go Tradition
#2 Make 3 - 4 cities ASAP
#3 Get Units to Defend yourself
#4 Make your NC as early as possible
#5 Production is King Improve production
#6 When you get Civil Service farm fresh water tiles ASAP
#7 Make wonders only when your cap has nothing better to do. Banking on getting wonders with early hammers is a bad plan.
#8 You can try Liberty when you are bored with Tradition, it will be harder in most cases. Honor and Piety are terrible. Don't do it unless you're simply trying to show boat.

Ctrl+r to show resource icons
y to show tile yields
g to show hex grid

and always get into the habit of moving your (ranged) units with m instead of right click. you won't regret this.

If you have Kilimanjaro on your map, either settle near it or at least make a road to it and send your military units there on pilgrimages to get the Altitude Training promotion. That extra move on hills can be incredibly useful.

Don't start playing on Settler and work your way up. After the tutorial you can basically go directly to Prince or even King. And eventually Emperor after you understand most of game mechanics, if it is too hard go down a level. It is in general a good idea to work your way down difficulty levels in order to find the one that fits you rather than up because you tend to form bad habits that don't go away that easily, and you only notice them when you are increasing difficulty.

Sessy said:

and always get into the habit of moving your (ranged) units with m instead of right click. you won't regret this.

Click to expand...

Sorry to interrupt... but, may I ask why?

If you want to capture a worker or other civilian unit with a ranged unit, using move assures you that you won't accidentally shoot the civilian instead of capturing it.

Browd said:

If you want to capture a worker or other civilian unit with a ranged unit, using move assures you that you won't accidentally shoot the civilian instead of capturing it.

Click to expand...

Likewise, if you want to take a pot shot at a random worker instead of rushing to capture it and proceed to get killed

Sadly it's very limited in terms of written guides. There are a few ones but they are aimed to varying degree of knowledge. For exemple my freedom guide below is probably incomprehensible for a new player. Tabarnak's 3 city tradition is a very efficient and basic opener that many use regularly http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=523371, I'd begin there.

I can recommend watching some LPs for more tips.

As you already said, reload is your friend, especially in the beginning and during war times. If you build a wonder for 20 turns and loose by a few turns, reload and see if you can speed up the production, by using a trade route, or chopping woods for instance. Or if it is hopeless, do not attempt to build it in the first place. You can also try to get the other civ into a war, sometimes they will delay building it.

Yeah, Tabarnak's guide is definitely one of the most helpful guides I have ever seen, because of it's focus on the early game, where I always felt playing sub-optimal (and still am, but way less then before).

In almost every era you probably want to aim for the tech that enhances your science research further (universities, public schools, research labs) first or at least second, and build or buy the buildings in your biggest science cities asap.

Besides Tradition, Rationalism is probably the strongest for beginners. Ideology is very situational, if you have the votes in the WC to make it the world ideology, you can basically choose freely, but if not, you whether go with what the people want, or you might be wasting all the ideology tenets to keep your folks happy.

Keep selling resources and lux to the AI. Especially horses are overrated. I keep selling them to the leading AI, as I think it will hurt them more than benefit. Iron on the other hand I sell to the weakest.

Once the AI knows your capital, sell your embassy for 1 gold per turn.

With your warrior, do not engage barbarians early on, keep exploring. Build scouts (I usually do two) first, find ruins. If you encounter another's civ scout, do not run behind him but go the other way. If you play with random seeds, you can reload the game until you get a ruin that you like. Scouts with advanced weapons are quite fun as they keep ignoring terrain cost. So they can move into woods or on hills and still shoot in one turn.

Do not fear to declare war on another civ in the very early game to steal a worker or a settler. They do not have enough troops to go after you and stealing two+ workers from other civs and one from a city state means you do not have to build them. You can keep the war with the city state going to train your troops a little.

Be always friendly to the UI and do as they tell you. But you can deny to go to war, they will not hold it against you. Open borders are situational, be careful, does not hurt to deny them either when in doubt. In the World Congress, try not to vote against anything. Vote for something that will pass anyways. it will make the AI happy, and even if there is a clear looser (like embargo) they will not hold it against you. If you are up to propose stuff, try to propose things others like. For the-next-host votes, every civ will usually vote for themselves, vote for the one that will be leader anyways, or make someone else leader if you have not enough votes for yourself. This alone sometimes helped me to avoid war. Be careful which city state you ally with and which to protect. it might hurt your relations or your purse if you invest in a city and then have to revoke the protection.

Check your borders on a regular basis, if you see troop movements on your border that means the AI is preparing to strike.

Try to keep (esp the warmongering) civs busy with fighting each other, but do not overdo it. If a Civ starts to eliminate one civ after the other it might become too strong in the end, and you will need to prepare to put an end to it.

You will not be able to build everything in every city, so do not attempt to.

Do not underestimate the power of internal trade routes. If you are behind in science it might be a good idea to do external trade routes for the extra science, but the advantage diminishes as you catch up.

Do not keep your cities in production mode for too long, they will grow too slow, and it will negatively effect you in the long run.

Some domination tips:

Get two horses, two melees and a lot of archers, later artilleries. The game is about range, hitting and not getting hit. A nice naval fleet can be obtained by using privateer and capture enemy ships, that can have a good snowball effect. In one game I build one frigate and one privateer and ended up with an army of 10+ ships.

Try to find another civ that will go to war with you. It will lower your warmongering penalty with them and will distract enemy troops. If possible, ally nearby city states first for further distraction. If the Ai captures it, you can free it for some liberation bonus.

Even though it is tempting, try not to fully eliminate another civ, rather capture/raze all but one city, make peace and let the someone else finish them off. They will happily do so and other civs will hate them for that.

The AI is dumb as hell, and especially when it comes to cities with limited access. The AI might place their range units in front of the city, effectively blocking the access for the melee units, who are then unable to reach it. in those circumstance, make sure to not kill the range units until all melees are dead.

For enemy range units hiding in their cities, use a worker-bait to lure them out.

The AI will happily destroy their melee units against a city instead of withdrawing, if a melee is almost dead anyways and the city is not in risk, choose a target with more health instead.
For range units, get the range promotion first (3xterrain bonus, then range), it will be the only way those units will be of any use later in the game.

The demographics are pretty worthless when it comes to army size. Even if an enemy is supposedly X times stronger than you, they do not know how to use it. Also it contains a lot useless units, like ships in the middle of the ocean, or carriers in general, etc. Atomic bombs are also worth 'a lot' in that statistic I think, but more often then not I have seen the AI drop bombs on empty cities, or even not using them at all. Once an enemy dropped bombs on single city until it was completely destroyed...did not know they can do that until then. Still totally worthless, he could have destroyed a good chunk of my army, but chose to destroy a city, and with that, basically commit suicide.

Hey guys, new to the game and I always get discouraged... There is just so much info to take it, I always get rekt unless I play on a really easy difficulty and become a warmonger. Any other victory I can't win, I don't even know how to win a culture victory quite frankly...Just looking for a good generic strategy that will work with any civ that can maybe get me into the late game and teach\show me the game a bit better...

thanks!

Man I'd recommend just watching some tutorials and lets plays. Then come back with any questions. It would be so much more informative for yourself.