How should i play this game?

[Telavel]

Hi guys!

I played Civ 5 for over 150 hours already. Sadly all those games were steamrolling enemies by domination on easiest difficulty.

After watching some history documentaries I decided I want to have some fun with Civ again, but this time on normal difficulty and I want to learn how to play this game for real.

I tried one game already. Setup: Russia, cause i like double resources, huge Earth map, with marathon speed of the game, max available amount of other civs and city-states. I wanted to have long huge game to learn.

It wasnt bad at the beggining as I didnt know many other civs, but after I discovered them or they discovered me I recognized how bad I am at this game. I am second last in points with best Civ having 3x points I have.
I struggle to get positive happiness, barely got positive gold per turn balancing between +0 to +10. I would like to still go domination victory as I just like to conquer whole world, but I am already scared of any other Civ declaring war on me looking at the military rankings . My only achievments in this game are 2 conquered city-states.

I decided to get some help and advices. I am not really sure if my whole setup is good to learn to play, also looking at the points I kind of suck at this game despite I try to make good decisions (they are good at least in my mind when I think about them) and plan my next turns. I saw and read few guides and I feel like I understand the basic game mechanics, but probably my choices for domination victory are just bad.

 

[mbbcam]

It is not an easy question to answer. A lot of the advice and guides are really tailored to Standard Size, Standard Speed, and so forth. They may not be applicable to other scenarios (at least, not without modification). One advantage of playing Standard/Standard is that games will not take as long, so you can play more of them and learn more quickly from experience. The score is not a good indicator of how well you are doing (unless you are playing for a points victory). Domination depends on hitting key technologies in good time. But rather than me trying to explain, it would be better if you read a guide like this:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/domination-on-immortal-deity-a-noobs-guide.547630/

And you could watch a video like this:

 

[Nizef]

As usual mbbcam and myself are aligned in our views. However, I would challenge you Telavel to play some games on standard speed (at least the first 100-150 turns or so) and instead of killing everything around you from the get go, you would focus on building up the infrastructure in your self-founded cities and focus on growth. I would like to outline some targets for you to hit:
1. The capital should be pop4 before t30 (on standard speed).
2. By the same time you should have at least a granary there and you should have at least one worker (steal him!), 1-2 scouts and maybe a shrine and/or a monument.
3. Build 3 settlers before t50-55 (easy if you go for liberty, might be tougher if you go for tradition).
4. By t80 you should have libraries in all cities (and a granary and also a monument (which obviously is easy with tradition and a little more challenging with liberty)).
5. Finish the National College by t90-95 and your capital should have at least pop9, preferably a little more, and the expansions should be pop4-7 and around the same time you should be able to finish either the liberty or the tradition tree.
6. Beeline for education and try to reach it on t115-120 at the latest (you have to leave the bottom half of the tech tree for later).
7. Do not build any of the early wonders!
8. Build at least one caravan/trade ship and use it for an internal trade route.
9. Improve luxuries to stay happy every turn.
10. Build military units mostly to take care of barbarians.

What I outlined above is a very robust way of catching up in technologies on high difficulties. When you manage this, you should have set yourself up with an significant technological advantage by t120-130 on Prince. From there on you can take to the war path and sweep the floor with every AI.

 

[plus]

always start small and than go big.tradition ,scout and warrior,at pop 4 in capital build settler,ignore the rank it means nothing.avoid capturing city states at all costs unless they attack u .remember that your biggest enemies are always the civs that are next to you.make sure to build capital on hill,use the terrain its very important

 

[BlackWizard]

Without save _I can see that you made 2 fÄÄÄÄÄÄing mistawqibnkes by capturin two city states. Avoid that always...even capturing one is msitake. <kljfbksaejwbgol

 

[bobbobbybobbob]

I suggest that you play standard size, standard speed on a Pangaea map. Huge map on earth sounds horrendous, also with epic speed. No, no, no. Keep it simple.

There is no absolute way to play this game. The possibilities are many. Don't fall into the trap that you need to go Tradition 5, into national college and the only way to war is with a +1 range unit. Or that you can only war in medieval era or earlier is with a borderline unit such as the camel archer and the keshiks.

There are so many x factors in this game, so I have no clue how anyone could straight up say without any knowledge of the map or players in the game that for example: conquering a CS is always wrong/never build a wonder or go tradition.

The game isn't designed for you to be a one trick pony. The game is designed for planning and to adapt after how the game develops. Which means, sometimes you can have conquered two capitals within turn 100, sometimes you take your first capital on turn 160. Does that mean you made bad choices in your game? Not necessarily.

The only reason why anyone screams tradition sim city nonsense is because it's safe to stay in a little square.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with going Piety 5 and setting up for a good domination conquest. Nothing wrong with building up a military at the very start at the game and rushing a capital. Nothing wrong with national college that isn't build below turn 100 or just skip it all together. As you learn the game I am sure that you will learn the benefits of for example killing a city state. That is of course if you are willing to fail, but that's up to you.

Sure if you wanna be safe and limit yourself. Go tradition 5, into rationalism 5 and don't do anything until Artillery or why not even until XCOM and Stealth Bombers?

Boring.

 

[jakpajakpa2007]

my advice is to attack in the beginning, depending on the difficulty of the game

 

[BlackWizard]

Best way to play this game is to select Poland always and re roll until you get at least 3 salts on your capital. You can also use IGE to place salt on your capital.

 

[jakpajakpa2007]

Assirius is a good civ to beat the game of conquest vitory.