noob questions

So I just finished my second campaign with Darius (first was Alexander) and I have plenty of questions and things that I don't understand enough to even formulate a question about them. I have to say that I'm starting to really enjoy this game and I feel like once I understand it better it will be one of my favorite strategy games.

My first question is about roads. Is there any benefit in connecting a tile with a resource (horse, wine etc) or a trading post, lumber jack to a city or to another tile by a road? I noticed that once I build like a trading post on a tile I start getting the gold immediately but do I get even move gold if I connect that trading post to a city by a road? Also as I was playing one of the city states asked me to connect our respective capitals by a road? I ordered my worker to construct one between my capital and theirs but after he was done it did not look like our capitals were connected so not sure what M'I missing there.

Also as I was browsing the site I have seen a lot of people mentioning piety but that's not something I encountered in my first two campaigns which I played well past the 500 turns. Was piety added recently from a patch or something? I bought my copy from amazon.com and now run through steam and I thought steam will automatically update your copy with the latest patch.

How do you guys play this game? Do you construct the same buildings in all you cities or only in the capital and leave the other cities undeveloped? I tend to construct the same building in all my cities and only construct the military ones in my capital but that tend to break the wallet later in the game.

My last question is about founding new cities. How far should I go from my existing cities when founding new ones? 3, 4, 5 tiles? I read somewhere that cities do not utilize tiles that are 3 hex away from them. Does that mean that if I construct a trading post 4 tiles away from a city I won't get the extra gold?

Thanks all and sorry for my English.

Is there any benefit in connecting a tile with a resource (horse, wine etc) or a trading post, lumber jack to a city or to another tile by a road?

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No, roads are only for connecting your cities to generate trade routes, and the slight movement bonus they give to units.

They're no longer needed to connect resources and they do not affect tile yields.

Also as I was playing one of the city states asked me to connect our respective capitals by a road? I ordered my worker to construct one between my capital and theirs but after he was done it did not look like our capitals were connected so not sure what M'I missing there.

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There is a bug in the current version (post-patch) that broke this quest; the game doesn't correctly realize when the quest is activated.

Also as I was browsing the site I have seen a lot of people mentioning piety

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Piety is the name of one of the social policy trees, like Liberty or Honor or Tradition.

How do you guys play this game? Do you construct the same buildings in all you cities or only in the capital and leave the other cities undeveloped? I tend to construct the same building in all my cities and only construct the military ones in my capital but that tend to break the wallet later in the game.

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It varies by strategy, but in general the game forces you to specialize cities.
In a military production city, build lots of mines and lumbermills and some farms, and build the military buildings (barracks, armory etc) and build your stuff there.
In a gold city, build lots of trading posts, and build markets, banks, etc. there
In a science city build lots of farms to get a large population, and build library, university, public school there.

How far should I go from my existing cities when founding new ones?

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Depends on your strategy, and whether you're going for a "tall" empire (few cities with large populations) or a "wide" empire (lots of smaller cities with medium populations).
Some social policies and Civ traits (Tradition, India) favor a tall empire, others favor a wide empire (Liberty, Order, Rome, France).

I read somewhere that cities do not utilize tiles that are 3 hex away from them.

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Cities can never work a tile more than 3 tiles away from them.

Does that mean that if I construct a trading post 4 tiles away from a city I won't get the extra gold?

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You don't get any extra gold from a trading post unless you have one of your citizens working that tile. So yes, there is no point in building improvements (except on luxuries/strategic resources) more than 3 tiles away from a city.
But you will hardly ever *get* a tile that is more than 3 tiles away from your city, because cities prefer to get tiles closer to them when your borders expand.

How do you guys play this game? Do you construct the same buildings in all you cities or only in the capital and leave the other cities undeveloped? I tend to construct the same building in all my cities and only construct the military ones in my capital but that tend to break the wallet later in the game.

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It depends on strategy, but as you pointed out, buildings cost money, and you notice this towards the end of the game when your GPT (gold per turn) goes down. (Thats the little +X number next to your gold that says how much you make per turn).

So depending on how much money you have, where a city is located, what Civ you are, and what type of victory you're going for

If you're going for domination, you're going to want forges, barracks, and armories in at least one city, (preferably with a high production) to turn out a lot of promoted units. You're also going to want some cities that specialize in gold, with markets, banks, and mints, in order to cover the cost of the units, as well as pay to upgrade them when you get the technologies necessary to do so. And if you still have some cities doing nothing, go for happiness buildings if you start to become unhappy or you start expanding, and maybe a culture building or wonder so that you can get through the Honor and possibly the Autocracy branches (although most people already finish the game by then).

If you want a science victory, get farms around your cities, build libraries everywhere, go for great library and national college, and then as the eras progress get some high production cities with factories and if possible an iron works for the space ship parts that come. Keep one military city so you don't fall behind. Build laboratories, observatories (if near mountains), and go into your city screen (double click on the city name), and assign citizens to work science buildings so you can get great scientists (gardens help to speed this up). GS help you research technologies in one turn, so use them on expensive techs that move you into new eras i.e Civil Service which is 60% more expensive than the other techs of its time. Also, make sure you move your spaceship parts to the capital if you notice that you havent won once building them

Culture victories emphasize just a couple (1-3) of large cities (Ghandi is good for this). Build farms and some trading posts around them. And in them build culture buildings and emphasize great wonders that give culture (Rameses is good for this). Stonehenge is great for the early game, Sistene chapel is invaluable, and so is the Sydney opera house. When you get to pick new policies, stick to branches since you have to finish 5 of them. Piety, and Freedom are good for culture wins. Also, just because you only have 1-3 cities, doesnt mean you dont fight other people. Fight people near you, and when you take their cities, keep them as puppets. They cost 3 unhappiness per turn, but they give you their culture at no cost overall.

Diplo victory I haven't done admittedly, but it requires a lot of $$$ so build banks markets and mints wherever you can, and trading post spam your cities. When you get policies go with patronage to help with city states, and commerce for some more money. Once you build the UN spend large amounts of money and buy city state's votes.

Time victory is hard on higher difficulties, basically make sure that no one else wins (take over people who look like they could win science or culture, out spend diplo winners, and prevent dominators from taking your capital)

Enjoy

MuradBey said:

So I just finished my second campaign with Darius (first was Alexander) and I have plenty of questions and things that I don't understand enough to even formulate a question about them. I have to say that I'm starting to really enjoy this game and I feel like once I understand it better it will be one of my favorite strategy games.

Click to expand...

I think you will find a lot of enjoyment out of the game. I have really enjoyed Civ 3, 4 & 5.

My first question is about roads. Is there any benefit in connecting a tile with a resource (horse, wine etc) or a trading post, lumber jack to a city or to another tile by a road? I noticed that once I build like a trading post on a tile I start getting the gold immediately but do I get even move gold if I connect that trading post to a city by a road? Also as I was playing one of the city states asked me to connect our respective capitals by a road? I ordered my worker to construct one between my capital and theirs but after he was done it did not look like our capitals were connected so not sure what M'I missing there.

Click to expand...

No, in Civ 5 roads are only for connecting your cities to form trade routes. Think of the roads in Civ 5 as the interstate highway system.

Now if you were to play Civ 3 & 4, you would need to build a road to connect your resources and you'd get more hammers out of mines and lumbermills with railroads. Luckily they removed that feature with Civ 5, because in Civ 3 & 4 you'd see roads on every tile by the end of the game.

Also as I was browsing the site I have seen a lot of people mentioning piety but that's not something I encountered in my first two campaigns which I played well past the 500 turns. Was piety added recently from a patch or something? I bought my copy from amazon.com and now run through steam and I thought steam will automatically update your copy with the latest patch.

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This is referring to the Piety tree in the Social Policies (F5 key). This policy tree is normally used by people that are working towards a cultural win. Meaning they plan to build the Utopia Project. Some reasons for taking the Piety tree are, it has some boosts to happiness, reduced happiness needed for starting a golden age and converts half of your excess happiness to culture.

How do you guys play this game? Do you construct the same buildings in all you cities or only in the capital and leave the other cities undeveloped? I tend to construct the same building in all my cities and only construct the military ones in my capital but that tend to break the wallet later in the game.

Click to expand...

You don't need all the buildings in all the cities. Most of the military buildings are a waste of time, because they cost too much to build and maintain for little benefit. That is, they don't reduce build times of units enough, nor give enough experience to the units to be worth building in most cases.

However, those buildings that are required in all cities to build a national wonder (heroic epic, national treasury, national college, etc.) are kind of an exception to the above. I say kind of, because you only need to build them and keep them long enough to build the national wonder. Most of them, such as the libraries and universities, you'd want to keep in all your cities. The barracks needed for heroic epic can all be sold off after building this national wonder. To sell the building just left click near its icon on the right hand column of the city details window.

Defensive buildings (walls, castle, military base) and money boosters (market, bank, stock exchange) do not have a maintenance fee, so go ahead and build these in all your cities.

My last question is about founding new cities. How far should I go from my existing cities when founding new ones? 3, 4, 5 tiles? I read somewhere that cities do not utilize tiles that are 3 hex away from them. Does that mean that if I construct a trading post 4 tiles away from a city I won't get the extra gold?

Click to expand...

Correct, cities can only work the 3 rings around the city. However, to work all the tiles in all 3 rings requires the city to have a population of 36, which can take a long time to build up. So a lot of folks build cities a little closer together. How close is really just personal preference.

The folks who are using an ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) tend to pack the cities in as close ass possible, and slightly offset to utilize as few roads as possible to connect all the cities. The idea behind this strategy is to primarily only with the initial 6 tiles in each city and to get as much land as possible inside your cultural borders without having to wait on natural expansion nor buying tiles. To fit them as tightly as possible, means going 2 tiles out and 1 tile to the side so a road between the 2 cities is only on those 2 tiles out. 3 Cities places this way will form a triangle and only require a road on 3 tiles to connect them.

Thanks all and sorry for my English.

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You're welcome and your English was better than a lot of folks who only speak English.

Thank you for the answers. I have couple more questions. Is there any way I can skip the introduction video (empror talking to his son) I tried esc, space, enter, mouse clicking, punching keyboard...etc Also I have my cities connected by trace route by land but the advisor keep telling me to construct a harbor to connect my city. Does having a harbor between two cities connected already witha trade route increase the gold even more?

1) There is no way that I'm aware of to disable the movie. The game is loading the starting menu at that time.
2) I believe this is a bug where the harbor trade route takes precidence over land routes. I've had many occasions where an enemy civ would blockade my harbor and I would recieve a trade route disrupted and then a trade route reestablished message in the same turn.
3) No I don't believe so

MuradBey said:

Thank you for the answers. I have couple more questions. Is there any way I can skip the introduction video (empror talking to his son) I tried esc, space, enter, mouse clicking, punching keyboard...etc Also I have my cities connected by trace route by land but the advisor keep telling me to construct a harbor to connect my city. Does having a harbor between two cities connected already witha trade route increase the gold even more?

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You only need to hit the "escape" key once. The movie will stop playing when the game finishes loading. You can disable the movie, but there will still be the same length of a black screen. It depends on how "strong" your computer is. Hit the escape when you see the 2K design or soon after.

To disable the opening movie.
Open My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/Usersettings.ini in notepad
scroll down to "SkipIntroVideo = 0" and change the 0 to 1.
Save.