1st time player

[cmorganuk]

Hi guys

I purchased Civ5 about a week ago having never played any of the series previously and I am loving it. I’m an avid player of the ‘total war’ series (apologies if that blasphemy around here), so I’m not a complete stranger to this kind of format and think I’m getting the hang of things quite quickly. Not sure why it’s taken me so long to discover the Civ series in the first place?

I’m only playing prince at the moment, it’s a bit easy but I’m just using it to get a feel of what tech paths work best, which buildings are more critical in the long run and just trying to build a general knowledge basis really as I’m starting from scratch. I think it’s going to take a while until I’m able to judge certain situations and be confident I’m making the right plays in all aspects of play really.
I’ve been reading lots of threads on here and picking up valuable tit bits along the way, there’s loads of cool advice around from some very knowledgeable players. But one thing I can’t find much on (probably because it’s ridiculously simple) is the special people and how they work. I’m not on about the guys that pop up and give you golden ages or a free tech etc, I’m on about the slots you get in certain buildings. How do you fill them up, how much benefit are they, do you tick the manually control box etc?

Any advice to help me along will be much appreciated.

 

[Nanzook]

Specialist slots are filled with population that would work your tiles. Depending on your social policies and a few wonders the benefit of the specialist differ. If mouse over your great person bars it will show you how many points you are gaining each turn you can adjust the speed at witch you produce the Great persons by adjusting the slots in the buildings.


If say you are lacking on tech you may want to put some specialist in your university or public school for small research boost.

hope that helps pretty basic

 

[cmorganuk]

Specialist slots are filled with population that would work your tiles. Depending on your social policies and a few wonders the benefit of the specialist differ. If mouse over your great person bars it will show you how many points you are gaining each turn you can adjust the speed at witch you produce the Great persons by adjusting the slots in the buildings.


If say you are lacking on tech you may want to put some specialist in your university or public school for small research boost.

hope that helps pretty basic

Oh ok that makes sense. So the slots are automatically filled but if a guys in your slots then he aint working your tiles. I can play around with it now and see how different things play out. Thanks for the help.

I think its quite tought to work out what benefits you long term, what doesn't, whats worth having, what isn't etc. I guess its just 'match experiance really' and something you pick up from playing the game for hours. Something I intend to do

 

[wannabewarlord]

cmorganuk: first off, welcome to Civ. You're in for a treat!

In my experience (and I assume many players are going to agree), specialist slots are poorly handled by the city governor, so you are really better of handling them yourself. Each specialist has certain advantages and as Nanzook already said, they depend also on social policies and wonders. Also, as you concluded correctly, a scientist can not work a tile, so you need to find a balance of how many specialists you want to employ and how many tiles you want worked.

Specialists also add points to the great people counter. So if you need to "grow" a great scientist, you want to have science specialists (i.e. University, Public School slots). At the same time, they will also add beakers (science) since they are science guys. Same goes for all others, so let's say you want an engineer, you fill engineer slots (Workshops, etc.) and they will help you grow a great engineer. At the same time they add hammers (production) to your city, since they are engineers. Dito for Artists (culture) and Merchants (Gold).

You'll get the feeling for it pretty soon when you start playing around with them manually.

 

[Cheeseisgood]

They've been explained well above, so I won't repeat what these guys have said.

Generally the specialist slots become more useful as the game goes on. You will want your population working the tiles in the early game as that will provide a greater benefit. Growing your cites and faster production will outweigh getting a little bit of science/culture/extra gold, unless you need to time a specific social policy/tech to finish at a certain time.

In the late game however, the specialist slots are much more worth filling. There are a few techs, buildings and wonders that add to them, the Statue of Liberty wonder being a good example. In the late game you can often end up with a specialist slot being worth far more than an improved tile.

 

[scheva007]

kudos that you are finding prince easy i always need a bit of luck to win on that (for the moment, hopefully ill improve too)

im a big TW-player myself btw .

 

[torfish]

Agreed on the kudos remark for the OP playing on Prince. New civ players usually start a level or two lower than Prince. It took me a couple of months to feel comfortable on Prince! Though this forum is an excellent resource to get a boost on how the game plays.

 

[Wilde]

So the slots are automatically filled but if a guys in your slots then he aint working your tiles.

I am not sure if the specialist will auto-fill if you auto-govern on the default setting. I usually will select Science (for example) and then the auto-govern will populate the specialist slots for science. In my experience, the best way to balance the specialists is to have enough citizens working the +3 (or my favorite +4 and +1 ) tiles to make sure you can still grow your population in a timely manner. Otherwise you get stuck using the specialists but your population stalls or grows every 60+ turns even when your empire is happy.

 

[ForzaFiori]

I am not sure if the specialist will auto-fill if you auto-govern on the default setting.

They will, but only if you have more pop then hexes I think. I know that I've left cities on default and didn't mess with specialists back when I was still figuring Civ5 out, and I can remember having specialist slots filled.

 

[krc]

I am not sure if the specialist will auto-fill if you auto-govern on the default setting. I usually will select Science (for example) and then the auto-govern will populate the specialist slots for science. In my experience, the best way to balance the specialists is to have enough citizens working the +3 (or my favorite +4 and +1 ) tiles to make sure you can still grow your population in a timely manner. Otherwise you get stuck using the specialists but your population stalls or grows every 60+ turns even when your empire is happy.

One thing to keep in mind is that when focusing on "Science" (for example), the governor will only fill the science specialist slots. If your population is large enough, the governor will leave unemployed citizens rather than put them into slots that you are not focusing on, such as production. Since great engineers are useful even with a science focus, you may have to assign citizens manually to get them doing something useful....

 

[cmorganuk]

Thanks for the advice guys, I had a good weekend playing around with the specialists.

I've moved on to king and am surprised at what a step up it seems to be, I had about 5-6 attempts of starting again trying to work out a starting path that would just give me a foothold or not get disasterously left behind early game. I couldn't keep happiness up or expand at the rate I needed to to keep up with the guys around me.

I'm playing continents (as America) and I think I'm now in a position in my game that I should win from, probably more from a decent starting position and luck than anything else, stumbling along a good build sequence. But I've secured my continent, seem to have a tech lead over the other guys with good gold and science output to build my war machine. I've got artillary and am just about to start spaming B17's, I think that should be enough, maybe I'm in for a shock though!

I've read alot about how on the higher levels you need to define your goals early on otherwise you'll generally struggle. So how do people plan how they are going to win? Do you have a pre-set start regardless then reach a certain point and decide which way you're going? I seem to naturally find myself heading for science, as I figure a tech lead just opens more doors for you. Then when I have a tech lead I usually can't resist building a modern army, taking people out and ending the game before a science win.

I haven't yet tried a cultural victory, the policies just seem to get so expensive so early so I think I'd drastically have to change the way I play to get near it.

Diplomacy seems kinda boring, also I don't think I've ever produced the amount of gold required to keep up the influence with the city states.

 

[Jodien37]

Whatever the victory type you are trying to achieve, science and wars are what will win you games. Conquer the AI down to very few cities, so noone can build a spaceship part, or noone can get any votes, or noone earns policies. Then you may choose how to end the game.

The best advice I can give you at this starting point, just try to micromanage your city screen, and get the feel there. Experiment with working tiles and assigning citizens to them. You will get a strong grasp of the game in a few short games.

 

[fmlizard2]

The one thing that most took me from a Prince/King player to a Immortal/Deity player was paying attention to . It is the least glamorous of the commodities in the game, but probably the most essential. Touches everything you do.

Farm, farm, farm.

 

[odin_toelust]

Another thing that is worth paying attention to is your workers. You generally want ~1 per city in order to get your improvements up at a reasonable rate. Also, you should try to optimize the value of each worker turn. Don't automate your workers either because the AI is pretty inefficient

I would suggest reading this http://www.civfanatics.com/content/civ3/strategy/cracker/civ3_starts/index.htm

It was made for Civ3 but a lot of the concepts still apply

 

[cmorganuk]

Another thing that is worth paying attention to is your workers. You generally want ~1 per city in order to get your improvements up at a reasonable rate. Also, you should try to optimize the value of each worker turn. Don't automate your workers either because the AI is pretty inefficient

I would suggest reading this http://www.civfanatics.com/content/civ3/strategy/cracker/civ3_starts/index.htm

It was made for Civ3 but a lot of the concepts still apply

Good pointer

Yeah working out the strength of tiles for present and future is definatley something I need to work on. Currently I pretty much improve the nearest tile to my worker, without much thought into what would be most beneficial, or future planning.

 

[Haig]

About diplo victory, yeah collecting votes and buying yourself votes can be stale (and sometimes frustrating when you're against a big CS user like Alex or Lizzie!) but there are more interesting challenges to do with it.

Did you know that if you liberate a major Civ's capital they will vote you in the United Nations vote?
Also liberating a captured city-state gives you a huuuge boost with it.

This means, that for a nice game you can try to be a "good guy" and liberate conquered civs and city-states, it's kind of like Allies in WW2 liberating occupied countries. Very rewarding.

 

[cmorganuk]

About diplo victory, yeah collecting votes and buying yourself votes can be stale (and sometimes frustrating when you're against a big CS user like Alex or Lizzie!) but there are more interesting challenges to do with it.

Did you know that if you liberate a major Civ's capital they will vote you in the United Nations vote?
Also liberating a captured city-state gives you a huuuge boost with it.

This means, that for a nice game you can try to be a "good guy" and liberate conquered civs and city-states, it's kind of like Allies in WW2 liberating occupied countries. Very rewarding.

I've not really tried a peaceful game yet, haven't had the chance, at least one AI usually wants to go to war with me. Then once you've taken over a few cities social policies get so expensive really quickly that I find it hard to focus on that type of victory.

If I try and stay small to keep policies cheap, the AI just steams way ahead of me in every other aspect of the game.

I tend to puppet cities and then after a few turns annex them, maybe this is what I'm doing wrong? But if I leave them as puppets they grow massive and cause me happiness problems.

 

[Jodien37]

I tend to puppet cities and then after a few turns annex them, maybe this is what I'm doing wrong? But if I leave them as puppets they grow massive and cause me happiness problems.

Change puppet's tiles from farms to trade centers. Puppet cities are permanently on gold focus. They should grow much slower than your core cities while giving you lots of gold from worked tiles.