Hey,
I've only started Civ 5 a few weeks ago (my signing up date actually) and had barely played any RTS prior to that, even less any turn based strategy game, so I apologize if some questions may sound noobish. For reference, I'm playing on epic speed, 10/12 Civs, Emperor difficulty 90% of the time, and currently on China.
So my first concern is how games go : what happens is I will rush one civ very early if I'm given the opportunity (aka they settled at a strategic point, I can take advantage of a weak terrain, etc.) and I take them out of the game by the time I can gather a few archers and one warrior or two. Whether I can do this or not, I then spend some time turtling to develop my cities since there are so many things to get in the early game. Call it bad luck or the game purely hating me, my neighbours are often very agressive civs, and I'll have to defend myself ; sometimes I won't be able to tank the excessive amount of Zulus assaulting me, sometimes I will and hopefully take a city when I counter-attack before my army is too damaged to keep fighting. Ensues a long wait until my special unit, in my present case the CKN, only broken by the occasional wars. And once I get my unit, well, game's over. Literally everytime I could just steamroll any other civ ; even last game, where I kept getting attacked and was de facto in the middle of a war when I unlocked them, they allowed me to take out the two most powerful military civs of the game in no time. I was behind by a huge amount of techs, but I'm guessing the AI not being brilliant at handling its army helped me a bit. The point is : at this moment, I usually just quit the game. If the other civs are too weak to even compare to me at the very start of the renaissance, I see no point in playing a game that's already unfolded for hundred of turns, especially given how very tedious handling armies is in the game (and that seriously bothers me to no extent).
1. Is there any mod to help with the immense pain that is micromanagement in Civ 5 (the awful pathing that needs to be redone every turn, etc.) ?
2. What else could I do to make the game more interesting without increasing the difficulty ? I might give a try to a mod that enhances the AI's ability to handle its military, but aside from that ? Since I play with everything on random most of the time, I never changed the options a lot, nor did I try to make teams. Not sure how well that works.
3. I asked for Domination victory as it is the one I do the most, but when I went for cultural/science I ended up pressing "End turn" more than any sane mind could ever bear in the late game. Do these naturally get more interesting even in the late game on higher difficulties ? Or is there anything to do/mod to make them more interesting ?
Another problem I have is handling my cities correctly. I often feel overwhelmed. Doesn't help that I love religion. I'll even often go full Piety just to get that reformation belief that allows me to purchase great people with faith (have yet to try to purchase military units though, assuming the game goes for long enough to make use of it, not sure if it is worth taking it or not). Because... I just find that to be fun, really, I guess it's a pretty weak tree otherwise, but I just like that one belief. Before that, though, I'll usually go liberty for the sole reason that I want to get my free settler, and sometimes a worker aswell, otherwise I can't compete with the Ai that settle every two turns, and I'm also very tempted to unlock the tradition opener only, just to be able to grow a tiiiny bit on my usually very low cultures cities. As a result, if I'm not going for a CV, I'll admit that I rarely complete another tree than piety before the game ends since I usually have troubles keeping up with the culture.
And that's partly where one my problem is : I usually get the basic buildings as soon as possible, atleast the Monument/Library to be able to grow/cope up with the tech rate, and if I didn't build the East india compagny yet, which is very likely, I have to get a market aswell to be able to build it, without forgetting the Barracks once I want to get the military national wonder (forgot its name)... and a worker to improve the city, and maybe one or two archers to defend it, if my capital can't afford to delay its own buildings. All of that takes a lot of time, especially in a city that didn't even have time to grow yet. In a production city, surrouned by hills and that will usually have grow quite a bit because it will most likely be my second city, that's alright. But on a science city that might not even have a lot of hills, let alone improved ones...
Which leads me to the next problem : I always try to get a super high production city for all of my military needs, and it's usually not my capital. That leaves me with three things to worry about : culture, science, and golds. Now the thing is, I tend to want to combine all of them. Science needs a high population and wonders > high population = specialists slots filled = why not build a few wonders for more culture = more great people = kind of want to get a Garden + National epic, and since Science work much better with jungle, I kind of want to get trading posts and markets in it as well if I can find a spot. In theory it becomes more of a country than a city in the late game given how much it'd give me of everything, but in reality, of course, it's way too much to handle for a city that will most likely slack on the production side, especially if it's located in the jungle. I often see screenshots of people with a five figure bank account, huge amount of culture/faith/science and everything in the very late game, and I feel like no matter how hard I try I could never get anywhere near that, and very few games lasted long enough anyways.
So, 4. How can I handle the early game settling and need to build the basic buildings before I get anything out of my city better (without buying everything, since the costs are way too high for that) ?
5. Any rule of thumb for my city specialization ? Or just general advices ? Aka for how much population I should usually aim, or when I should start to put specialists, or how much jungle times will I need in reality most of the games, or how I should split the specializations... anything welcome, really. Also, is the 50% science bonus from Observatory an absolute need for a science city (aka is it worth sacricing a potentially better spot to get near a mountain) ?
6. Any mod to enhance the AIs tendency to chose terrible spots for its settling, generally only guided by luxury ressources it seems ? I never ever conquered a city worth not razing, and I'd raze their capitals too if I could... hell, they even managed to sandwhich a natural wonder within 4 tiles of TWO cities once, making it effectively unworkable at all for very little reason. Not to mention the amount of time before a city gets back on its feet that makes it even more useless.
Apologize for the potentially long post. I also take any advice on Civs that fit my playstyle (Love the early game's "looking for the right spot", love fighting no matter what victory I pursue or whether it's to defend myself or attack so no victory type prefered as long as there's action, love playing with faith, love playing with a few fairly large cities and generally speaking just like to crush a game in every aspect before leaving it). Same for maps, might sound like a bit of a dumb question but I see a lot of screenshots of people playing maps with a large island and another continent much further away, yet no matter which one I try I never seem to end up with such a setting, and if I randomize it it's 80% an archipelago-like map. It'd be nice to have some change, rather than to always play on an almost full land map. I thougt about playing on Earth map, but apparently it's pretty flawed when not modded ? And same for anything that would make the AI more agressive besides getting on a higher difficulty than Emperor (which only makes it more agressive because it has a better military anyway, that's very artificial).
I know that's a lot of questions. Thank you for taking the time to read.
I've only started Civ 5 a few weeks ago (my signing up date actually) and had barely played any RTS prior to that, even less any turn based strategy game, so I apologize if some questions may sound noobish. For reference, I'm playing on epic speed, 10/12 Civs, Emperor difficulty 90% of the time, and currently on China.
So my first concern is how games go : what happens is I will rush one civ very early if I'm given the opportunity (aka they settled at a strategic point, I can take advantage of a weak terrain, etc.) and I take them out of the game by the time I can gather a few archers and one warrior or two. Whether I can do this or not, I then spend some time turtling to develop my cities since there are so many things to get in the early game. Call it bad luck or the game purely hating me, my neighbours are often very agressive civs, and I'll have to defend myself ; sometimes I won't be able to tank the excessive amount of Zulus assaulting me, sometimes I will and hopefully take a city when I counter-attack before my army is too damaged to keep fighting. Ensues a long wait until my special unit, in my present case the CKN, only broken by the occasional wars. And once I get my unit, well, game's over. Literally everytime I could just steamroll any other civ ; even last game, where I kept getting attacked and was de facto in the middle of a war when I unlocked them, they allowed me to take out the two most powerful military civs of the game in no time. I was behind by a huge amount of techs, but I'm guessing the AI not being brilliant at handling its army helped me a bit. The point is : at this moment, I usually just quit the game. If the other civs are too weak to even compare to me at the very start of the renaissance, I see no point in playing a game that's already unfolded for hundred of turns, especially given how very tedious handling armies is in the game (and that seriously bothers me to no extent).
1. Is there any mod to help with the immense pain that is micromanagement in Civ 5 (the awful pathing that needs to be redone every turn, etc.) ?
2. What else could I do to make the game more interesting without increasing the difficulty ? I might give a try to a mod that enhances the AI's ability to handle its military, but aside from that ? Since I play with everything on random most of the time, I never changed the options a lot, nor did I try to make teams. Not sure how well that works.
3. I asked for Domination victory as it is the one I do the most, but when I went for cultural/science I ended up pressing "End turn" more than any sane mind could ever bear in the late game. Do these naturally get more interesting even in the late game on higher difficulties ? Or is there anything to do/mod to make them more interesting ?
Another problem I have is handling my cities correctly. I often feel overwhelmed. Doesn't help that I love religion. I'll even often go full Piety just to get that reformation belief that allows me to purchase great people with faith (have yet to try to purchase military units though, assuming the game goes for long enough to make use of it, not sure if it is worth taking it or not). Because... I just find that to be fun, really, I guess it's a pretty weak tree otherwise, but I just like that one belief. Before that, though, I'll usually go liberty for the sole reason that I want to get my free settler, and sometimes a worker aswell, otherwise I can't compete with the Ai that settle every two turns, and I'm also very tempted to unlock the tradition opener only, just to be able to grow a tiiiny bit on my usually very low cultures cities. As a result, if I'm not going for a CV, I'll admit that I rarely complete another tree than piety before the game ends since I usually have troubles keeping up with the culture.
And that's partly where one my problem is : I usually get the basic buildings as soon as possible, atleast the Monument/Library to be able to grow/cope up with the tech rate, and if I didn't build the East india compagny yet, which is very likely, I have to get a market aswell to be able to build it, without forgetting the Barracks once I want to get the military national wonder (forgot its name)... and a worker to improve the city, and maybe one or two archers to defend it, if my capital can't afford to delay its own buildings. All of that takes a lot of time, especially in a city that didn't even have time to grow yet. In a production city, surrouned by hills and that will usually have grow quite a bit because it will most likely be my second city, that's alright. But on a science city that might not even have a lot of hills, let alone improved ones...
Which leads me to the next problem : I always try to get a super high production city for all of my military needs, and it's usually not my capital. That leaves me with three things to worry about : culture, science, and golds. Now the thing is, I tend to want to combine all of them. Science needs a high population and wonders > high population = specialists slots filled = why not build a few wonders for more culture = more great people = kind of want to get a Garden + National epic, and since Science work much better with jungle, I kind of want to get trading posts and markets in it as well if I can find a spot. In theory it becomes more of a country than a city in the late game given how much it'd give me of everything, but in reality, of course, it's way too much to handle for a city that will most likely slack on the production side, especially if it's located in the jungle. I often see screenshots of people with a five figure bank account, huge amount of culture/faith/science and everything in the very late game, and I feel like no matter how hard I try I could never get anywhere near that, and very few games lasted long enough anyways.
So, 4. How can I handle the early game settling and need to build the basic buildings before I get anything out of my city better (without buying everything, since the costs are way too high for that) ?
5. Any rule of thumb for my city specialization ? Or just general advices ? Aka for how much population I should usually aim, or when I should start to put specialists, or how much jungle times will I need in reality most of the games, or how I should split the specializations... anything welcome, really. Also, is the 50% science bonus from Observatory an absolute need for a science city (aka is it worth sacricing a potentially better spot to get near a mountain) ?
6. Any mod to enhance the AIs tendency to chose terrible spots for its settling, generally only guided by luxury ressources it seems ? I never ever conquered a city worth not razing, and I'd raze their capitals too if I could... hell, they even managed to sandwhich a natural wonder within 4 tiles of TWO cities once, making it effectively unworkable at all for very little reason. Not to mention the amount of time before a city gets back on its feet that makes it even more useless.
Apologize for the potentially long post. I also take any advice on Civs that fit my playstyle (Love the early game's "looking for the right spot", love fighting no matter what victory I pursue or whether it's to defend myself or attack so no victory type prefered as long as there's action, love playing with faith, love playing with a few fairly large cities and generally speaking just like to crush a game in every aspect before leaving it). Same for maps, might sound like a bit of a dumb question but I see a lot of screenshots of people playing maps with a large island and another continent much further away, yet no matter which one I try I never seem to end up with such a setting, and if I randomize it it's 80% an archipelago-like map. It'd be nice to have some change, rather than to always play on an almost full land map. I thougt about playing on Earth map, but apparently it's pretty flawed when not modded ? And same for anything that would make the AI more agressive besides getting on a higher difficulty than Emperor (which only makes it more agressive because it has a better military anyway, that's very artificial).
I know that's a lot of questions. Thank you for taking the time to read.
