Unusual tips!

OK after a pro tip i ll give an even proer pro tip:

when selecting a non military unit (worker/settler/GP/missionar) you can hover around tiles and see if they are ocopied - because they ll turn red when they are.

Pretty helpful to avoid running into barbs when scouting, see barbs comming before they take settlers/workers, avoid pillaging and generally when planing/being in war.

Kind of a must to do in multiplayer vs good opponents, if u dont want loose workers or catch workers yourself.

tommynt said:

OK after a pro tip i ll give an even proer pro tip:

when selecting a non military unit (worker/settler/GP/missionar) you can hover around tiles and see if they are ocopied - because they ll turn red when they are.

Pretty helpful to avoid running into barbs when scouting, see barbs comming before they take settlers/workers, avoid pillaging and generally when planing/being in war.

Kind of a must to do in multiplayer vs good opponents, if u dont want loose workers or catch workers yourself.

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Nice tip. Can it be used to find submarines?

I learned this one on these forums and it works great: Don’t make your holy city your capital.

The AI tends to missionary/GP spam only cities it has LoS on. Embassy gives visibility, and the AI also has a preference to convert holy cities over others, so this tips helps that, plus it keeps your religion intact in the holy city, so undoing the conversion is easier. Having a temporary different religion in your cities is often helpful, but getting religion back can be a PITA.

beetle said:

I learned this one on these forums and it works great: Don’t make your holy city your capital.

The AI tends to missionary/GP spam only cities it has LoS on. Embassy gives visibility, and the AI also has a preference to convert holy cities over others, so this tips helps that, plus it keeps your religion intact in the holy city, so undoing the conversion is easier. Having a temporary different religion in your cities is often helpful, but getting religion back can be a PITA.

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Great tip.

tommynt said:

want a pro tip?

Build 2 more warriors in early game as you think you should and every bo you read out there suggests.
Demand tribute on lower difficultis or catch workers on higher difficulties with them.
After that.
Send your units all around world and let em kill barbs for CS influence and camp kill quests.

Much more imporant as granny out 5-10 turns more early.

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Just tried this and it worked out extremely well for me. I was able to beat the AI to a lot more barb camps for CS influence, and grab free workers that barbs had captured without having to get the diplo hit from stealing from CS.

If you can't win the vote to become host of the United Nations, you might as well vote for someone else to get the diplo points.

(not sure if this was mentioned already)

When you get notification while waiting for your turn that someone else built a wonder you are building, you can change your production before your turn starts so you at least get 1 turn of hammers back.

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Vitruvius said:

When you get notification while waiting for your turn that someone else built a wonder you are building, you can change your production before your turn starts so you at least get 1 turn of hammers back.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

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Yeah but you will lose some amount of gold. Wasted hammers are turned to gold.

If you are close to completing the Wonder you have built 12 turns you lose quite bit of money and it's not usually good to chance production. If you have only built that certain wonder for 2 turns it's of course better to chance production.

If you are using spies on other capitals you can usually see if they are building wonders and plan accordingly. However enemy might have GE or use faith to purchase one.

If you have embassies you can check capital to see if AI is building a wonder. There's allways a draw of the wonder under construction.

A bit exploity but:

If you have an aggressive AI personality for a neighbor who has strategic based UUs, look in their territory for that strategic. If they don't have it, sell yours to them as soon as you can (especially if you don't use it for your own UU). This can actually bait them into settling as usual instead of settling a city specifically to get the resource they want, and will often have them come back to you over and over for the trade?

The reason? If they do declare war on you, you cut the legs out from under those units. Rome attacking you and suddenly finding he's in iron deficit from declaring war, or Ghengis' war declaration suddenly leaving him with more Keshiks than he has horses to support can take the heat out of a few of the more aggressive guys.


Others:
-Remember that the Civil Service food bonus applies to all fresh water- not just rivers, but tiles bordering lakes and adjacent to oasis tiles as well (can take some of the pain out of desert-heavy starts). Fresh water also allows any bordering hills to be farmed as well; take that, Terrace Farms!

-Placing a diplomat in a city not only lets you negotiate for votes, but tells you the voting inclination of a civ in the first place. Check the WC after each diplomat settles in, it should update the Yea or Nay prediction count with your target's vote. In some cases, the guy you wanted to bribe could be planning to vote that way anyway, allowing you to save your money.

-CS negative influence caps at -60, and aside from Permanent War, won't overflow. If you want to be a jerk to them, do so all at once: bullying, attacking to take extra workers, and citadel bombing can actually all 3 be done to the same CS and often cleared (or forgotten within a few turns) by finishing a single quest for them.

-You will usually only get notifications on who built a wonder if you have an active embassy, diplomat, or spy in a civ's city. Other times, the notification will simply say it was built "in a far away land." However, if it's civ you've already met, their wonder list will be updated on the Global Politics screen, allowing you to always know who built it; presuming you've met them.

And finally:
-Some CS quests can give you strong hints if not outright data on your opponents. For example, if you see a quest for culture appear, hover over the quest icon on the first turn. If an AI is beating you, you can usually compare it to the cultural influence screen to know which AI, and you'll know their exact Culture per Turn. The same can be intuited by faith quests for determining the faith leader's exact Faith per Turn.

Cpt Oblivious said:

-Placing a diplomat in a city not only lets you negotiate for votes, but tells you the voting inclination of a civ in the first place. Check the WC after each diplomat settles in, it should update the Yea or Nay prediction count with your target's vote. In some cases, the guy you wanted to bribe could be planning to vote that way anyway, allowing you to save your money.

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May have already been mentioned, but it's also good to check occasionally and see if anyone has a diplomat in your capital. You can often allow yourself to be bribed for votes you were planning to cast anyway.

One funny thing you can do is steal a worker from a nearby City-State early in the game and use him like you normally would. Then after some time has passed the City-Sate is no longer mad at you and you no longer need that particular worker you can move him next to a barb camp and let him get captured by barbs. Then you can bravely free the worker from the barbarian oppresion and return him to the CS that he came from for 45 influence.

If there is a civ - especially agressive one - packed tightly between you and some 3rd civ, hostilities are likely. Few favors to your neighbour and timely discussion about jointly declaring war to the 3rd civ can sometimes be an answer: for your aggressive neighbour, it's about fighting either you or that 3rd civ anyways, in order to grow. Yet if you propose to fight together, he might be thinking his chances are better than (otherwise) too low, and thus might just agree. For you, fighting a civ which is "behind" your neighbour who is also fighting it - is not a big deal. Depends on how the war goes, you might just let it go for occasional experience for your units, possibly lucrative peace treaty if the 3rd civ starts to lose big-time, or even a stab in the back to your neighbour if he starts to lose big-time, doing separate peace with the 3rd civ in the same time - sure, it's treachery, but hey, your aggressive neighbour would do the same, given right circumstances, plus you might be getting a nice city or few outta him, and or clearing some space for your territory to grow. But, gotta be careful to ensure any victim of such schemes doesn't have powerful navy, if you have any coastal cities - can be a big pain.

Paszczak said:

One funny thing you can do is steal a worker from a nearby City-State early in the game and use him like you normally would. Then after some time has passed the City-Sate is no longer mad at you and you no longer need that particular worker you can move him next to a barb camp and let him get captured by barbs. Then you can bravely free the worker from the barbarian oppresion and return him to the CS that he came from for 45 influence.

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Um, huh. Wow, I never thought of that one. *scribbles note to try this next game*

For domination victories, bribe your neighbor into attacking city states. If they capture it, you can liberate it for a huge warmonger penalty clear. If they don't succeed, the CS will have decimated their army, left them out of position, and wasted a lot of their production.

Also, if you won a war against a domination-type civ who is facing elimination, yet you want to keep diplomatic relations with the rest of the world, make DoW'ing their neighbor part of the peace deal when you take their resources. The neighbor will easily eliminate them for you, leaving you with one less person chain denouncing you, setting up alliances against you, and causing problems in the world congress for you in the rest of the game. They would never sign a deal like that after the peace treaty, and is especially effective in times where their neighbor is the honorable type and can't be bought.

Wow. How hard is it to bribe AIs to do that? I had always assumed it was an incredibly costly thing, but perhaps they'll actually DOW on city states for cheap?

slowcar said:

Something on the borderline of AI exploit:
If you want to sell strategic resources and a friendly/neutral AI wants them they will pay 2g/turn for a single one.
Depending on their need you can sell them maybe 10, each for 2g/t for a total of 20g/t -> 600g on normal, while they would offer you 450g on direct cash.

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Teproc said:

I don't see how that's an exploit. Money right now is more valuable than money in the next 30 turns.

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Winsling said:

It's a bit garbled. His point is that if you sell 10 iron 1 at a time, you'll get 20gpt. If you sell the lot of 10 iron together, you'll get about 15gpt. Basically, the AI thinks an iron is worth 1.5gpt, so if it buys one it rounds up and doesn't remember that you owe it half a gpt.

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I wouldn't call it an exploit either - it even mimics real world economics in that buying in bulk usually nets you a better deal than buying individually. Not saying that was intentional - but I definitely don't feel like I'm cheating the A.I. when I don't sell my goods in bulk.


Also, I suppose I'll contribute - not sure if this has been said yet, but as a last resort, you can protect a trade caravan from being pillaged by a barbarian with a nearby worker. If a Worker and a caravan occupy the same space when a barb moves in, it'll cap the worker and the caravan will get away. This is useful if you find yourself without early protection for whatever reason and your caravan is by your border. Obviously you can't stop the caravan from walking into the path of a barb, but you can pull a worker away from improving a tile to save the caravan. You can just get the worker back later.

you can save great writers untill you need them.
the writers will allways give the culture your last popped great writer would produse.
so if you save alot of them and get world fair done and a golden age at the same time while makeing a great writer,
Then all your great writers will get that high amount of culture one time use.
5 great writers with 6/8/12/18 turns of culture a pop will yield 5-6 policies.

if you had used them 1 at a time you would barely get the culture worth of 1,5 policies.

usually best to use them right after you pop rationalism in a normal game so you can get 3 policies in rationalism pretty fast.

A second use for them is to pop them after you unlock ideologies so you get a hefty early investment into your ideology.

here's a trick I like to do.

Don't want to declare war for a diplomatic penalty?

-sign defensive pact with your best friend
-bribe the AI to attack your best friend, trade him all of your resources if you have to
-defensive pact kicks in, you go to war "defending your friend", don't get hit by negative diplomatic modifiers and get a big green one for "fighting the same enemy" Plus you get ALL of your resources you traded to him for declaring the war

@neo_one
When you declare war because of mutual protection pact, it counts as a standard declaration of war and incurs standard penalties. In other words, you are the aggressor. Al you get with this move is reduced penalty for taking you enemy's cities (applies to your allies in the war).

1. As it was stated above, workers are a great bait for barbarians. I often use them to protect my plots from being pillaged. This way my improvement is safe, I get one more turn to kill the barbarian and I'm able to free my worker right away.

2. AI will never attack a unit it cannot see. If you are 3 tiles away from an enemy archer, it won't move 1 tile closer and bombard you unless there is some other unit that can see your military unit. The archer in question may use its whole movement to approach and you will be able to attack it next turn. This works best for navies.

3. City with 0hp will never kill an attacking unit and will always be conquered. Your conqueror will be in the worst case reduced to 1hp and will be safe inside the city.

4. AI's diplomatic opinion towards you defaults when you make peace with them. It's being recalculated one turn later. Why is it important? Because it gives you a short window to trade with them on 1:1 basis, even if they denounce you on their next turn.

5. A thing that many people seem to forget: if you haven't met civ X before invading civ Y, civ X will not be mad. It's best used for continents maps.

6. If you want to deny an enemy civ an artifact, you can always turn it to a monument. Monuments outside enemy city radius but inside of his borders are useless for him, but you've managed to deny him this artifact and it happened without diplo penalty.

7. Breaking promises is less costly than denying requests.

8. If a Civ sends missionaries to your lands and you have founded your own religion, they are not your friends. All conversions are seen as hostile acts so if a civ decides to do this, they may as well backstab you anytime soon.

9. If an unfriendly civ turns nice all of a sudden and offers you to attack together some other civ, you are going to get backstabbed.

10. If the whole world hates someone, you should hate him too. At least pay lip service.

11. AI is much less likely to settle in your direction if you deny them an embassy.

12. You cannot steal techs from a city you haven't seen so if you deny embassies to other nations and won't let them anywhere near your cities, you don't need to bother with counterespionage. Keep in mind, that the same is true with beneficial trade routes.

One more thing that is not obvious for many players:
Archaeologists use the mechanics of workers, i.e. they can be captured and are affected by all modifiers to worker's speed of work.