Intermediate advice?

[adcarrymaokai]

Hey all! I played a lot of Civ3 back in the day but moved on to other games, and only recently gave Civ5 another chance with the BNW expansion (I played vanilla on a friend's computer and didn't like it).

The reason why I decided to get BNW was the scenarios. I absolutely fell in love with "Scramble for Africa," which I played on King -> Emperor -> Immortal -> Diety. As Deity, I won as Ethiopia - too easy with defensive terrain and op lategame UU and policies; came in second as Boers and later as Egypt by eliminating Ethiopia on turn 99 but getting wrecked by Boers the exact same turn. Also won The Mongol scenario on Immortal. Other were mostly King-Emperor, since I was learning.

Then I played 4 "normals" games, from King to Immortal, all of which I won.
If anyone is interested, here is a brief history of these games (if you'd like to critique)

Spoiler :

1. Venice, huge map, small islands (for teh coastal bias and to prevent AI expansion), marathon speed, king. Got insanely good location, beelined to optics, explored, puppeted 3 CS and bought out the rest of CS for an easy Diplo win. Wanted Cultural, but just couldn't push tourism into Ethiopia fast enough and got tired of 1k+ turns on teh marathon.

2. Egypt, huge, Pangea, marathon, emperor. Decided to try out religion mechanic and ended up with Stonehenge, Great Mosque/Hagia/Borobudur. Spread Islam to about 60+ cities in the end. 300 gold per conversion. 3 cities total, very tall. Next door was Oda, but I somehow evaded all his warmongering. Purchased GMs with faith and sent on tours to the remaining civs that needed to be influenced somewhere around industrial/modern eras and won. Had a lot of wonders and culture.

3. Babylon, huge, Pangea, Epic, emperor. Science victory. Took liberty to snag a good place from Montezuma (I replayed) with free settler. Founded 4 more cities, then discovered Casimir who got a huge land pocket and was expanding like crazy with 16+ cities, freaked out and founded several more cities. Built Petra in one satellite city, rushed Hubble Space and took 3-rd tier Freedom policy to purchase a couple of Spaceship parts with gold. Had some other wonders, and a relatively peaceful game. Montezuma DoW'ed me, so I rolled 2 turns back and bought 3-4 units, which dissuaded him from going to war with me.

4. Korea, huge, Pangea, Normal, Immortal. Rerolled several times because I wanted to try the desert folklore + Petra strat I read so much about on the forums. Had to replay several times to get desert folklore. In fact, I had to get pottery asap, open tradition and open Piety (some culture ruins) and build a shrine asap. Finally, I got both Petra and desert folklore and took interfaith dialogue. Spammed missionaries to two nearby CS which were the battlegrounds between me and Isabella's catholicism. The AI is not stupid at this level, and Madrid was surrounded by 6 units, so I couldn't send missionaries there. Missionaies gave 70-100 beakers, so at some point I stopped doing that and saved faith for GEs to build some wonders just for the heck of it and GSs for research. Also, tried out Order and picked the tenet to rush my last spaceship part with GE. Finished Space Race when Arabia was adding just their second piece. Follower Beliefs and Reformation kinda disappointed, but I probably took the wrong ones. Overall, safe and peaceful game. But for the heck of trying out combat, I denounced and later Dow'ed Pocatello who conquered my ally CS and then liberated that CS. 5 cities total, mostly founded them for science, but I wonder if Korean UA outscales the 5% penalty from additional cities.

I assume I learned rather fast (also thanks to many forum threads). However, there are still a few questions I have, especially when it comes to Immortal+ games. Right now, I plan to stay on Immortal and perhaps will move on to Deity, since I want highly challenging games. Civ5 is pretty good with making sure you have to keep up in science, tech, faith, culture, diplomacy, and military to get through.

(I apologize in advance if there are too many questions. I am not trying to spam the forum and I have researched a lot of other questions prior to this thread.)

1. Buildings. What to build and what not to build? Water mill is pretty useful, but what about windmill or workshop? Does the 1 extra hammer and +10% production increase translate well lategame? Then there are banks and stock exchanges. They aren't worth in low gold cities, are they? Is constabulary good only in the capital? Are shrines even good if you decided to ignore religion? How many pastures justify a stables and how many mines, a forge? If you go wide, are granaries really needed?

2. Culture. I am a culture whore, but how worth are +1 culture buildings when CS's give a lot more culture from friendships/alliances and landmarks/holy sites/academies with world congress resolution give more culture than all the buildings combined? I always try to build all the culture buildings and as many wonders as I can, but +1 culture is just killing me. It seems only worth if you stuff them with great people.

3. Specialists. Do you have to stuff all the specialist slots if you have them (somewhat a point of getting specialist buildings in the first place)? I try to assign citizens to worktiles manually, but when cities grow, the AI randomly assigns citizens to specialists and then switches over to tiles and that confuses me. Also, when do you start expending great people for immediate results rather than building improvements? An early great scientist with 8 beakers is game breaking, but after Atomic Era it is better to just rush techs. When is the point at which total science from GS outscales the per turn output? Same with great writers.

4. Worker/Scout. I've read a bunch of Deity guides which recommend stealing a worker. Is it really that crucial? And how long does the penalty last? Also, I usually build 2 scouts for that Pangea exploration because it seems that the early extra gold, tech, population, culture, and faith completely justify the time it took to build them. Good or bad thinking?

5. Diplomacy. I noticed that at higher difficulties it becomes much harder to keep CS allies. What happens is that my allied CS gets couped, then next turn I give them money and take them back. The same turn an AI becomes ally with them. Next turn I give money and win the CS back, but the AI immediately supplants me as their ally. It becomes a battle of attrition where I keep sinking money into nothing. Why does the AI do that and how to deal with it?

6. Military. So far, I am not planning to go for domination victory because it seems to require supreme combats skills and knowledge, and BNW seems to be very punishing of any warmonger in the game. Every time I dream of going ham as Attila, I see Shakas, Attilas, or Genghis Khans in my games who DOW their neighbor and then the rest of the self-righteous AI gangbang them before they even reach the Industrial age. That's not my idea of fun. However, even when playing peacefully, I am still very paranoid and live in constant fear that I am going to get DoW'ed, and good bye that cultural victory. So, what kind of military/how big do you need for peaceful victories if you just want to play defensive?

Thanks, and Happy New Year.

 

[Resipsa]

>1. Buildings. What to build and what not to build? Water mill is pretty useful, but what about windmill or workshop? Does the 1 extra hammer and +10% production increase translate well lategame? Then there are banks and stock exchanges. They aren't worth in low gold cities, are they? Is constabulary good only in the capital? Are shrines even good if you decided to ignore religion? How many pastures justify a stables and how many mines, a forge? If you go wide, are granaries really needed?

Water mills are good in tall civs but not really worth the maintenance and the production in a widish empire +5 cities, workshops are good for the specialist slot the hammers to build is made up by the increase in production but just barely. Only build them if you plan on working the specialist

>2. Culture. I am a culture whore, but how worth are +1 culture buildings when CS's give a lot more culture from friendships/alliances and landmarks/holy sites/academies with world congress resolution give more culture than all the buildings combined? I always try to build all the culture buildings and as many wonders as I can, but +1 culture is just killing me. It seems only worth if you stuff them with great people.

Well they are available earlier than WC and Holy Sites but largely they are there to house you great works which do produce culture. They aren't necessary for all victories as Siam you can skip everything past monument if you are going for a Science victory


>3. Specialists. Do you have to stuff all the specialist slots if you have them (somewhat a point of getting specialist buildings in the first place)? I try to assign citizens to worktiles manually, but when cities grow, the AI randomly assigns citizens to specialists and then switches over to tiles and that confuses me. Also, when do you start expending great people for immediate results rather than building improvements? An early great scientist with 8 beakers is game breaking, but after Atomic Era it is better to just rush techs. When is the point at which total science from GS outscales the per turn output? Same with great writers.

NO, you don't want to work all you specialists especially if you don't want to pop a great person that you dont need but will increase your incremental cost of the next great person. basically I'm talking about the great merchant. You can lock your specialists too and the governor won't do it. Get in the habit of scrolling through your cities every few turns in the late game.

The rule for expending Great Scientists in a science victory is save them after you have public schools up, ie leave them idle in cities or near cities until you have Labs +8 turns once you get labs up drop everything including growth for max science for those 8 turns and then burn your great scientists

4. Worker/Scout. I've read a bunch of Deity guides which recommend stealing a worker. Is it really that crucial? And how long does the penalty last? Also, I usually build 2 scouts for that Pangea exploration because it seems that the early extra gold, tech, population, culture, and faith completely justify the time it took to build them. Good or bad thinking?

Yes, its not mandatory but it is crucial if you don't steal the worker on deity you're only letting the opponent get further ahead. You need to leech the AI and gain some of that ground back. You can usually get a white peace even terms between 12-18 turns later.
If you are rolling tradition build 2 scouts on pangaea heck build 3 scouts if you are on a hill and can pound 3 out by turn 13 or so.

>
5. Diplomacy. I noticed that at higher difficulties it becomes much harder to keep CS allies. What happens is that my allied CS gets couped, then next turn I give them money and take them back. The same turn an AI becomes ally with them. Next turn I give money and win the CS back, but the AI immediately supplants me as their ally. It becomes a battle of attrition where I keep sinking money into nothing. Why does the AI do that and how to deal with it?

You can Coup too! Once you've reached tech parity what else are you gonna do with them. Once they are your allies you can DOW the competing Civ if its really difficult.

6. Military. So far, I am not planning to go for domination victory because it seems to require supreme combats skills and knowledge, and BNW seems to be very punishing of any warmonger in the game. Every time I dream of going ham as Attila, I see Shakas, Attilas, or Genghis Khans in my games who DOW their neighbor and then the rest of the self-righteous AI gangbang them before they even reach the Industrial age. That's not my idea of fun. However, even when playing peacefully, I am still very paranoid and live in constant fear that I am going to get DoW'ed, and good bye that cultural victory. So, what kind of military/how big do you need for peaceful victories if you just want to play defensive?

Go hard with any of them, obviously the have different tech order adn attack times but for an easy civ to roll a domination game try China or Mongolia their Military UU has the longest time that they are relevant. Often what happens with Atilla is that you kill several civs and then you pursue another victory condition. Play the first 100 turns of a game and if things don't work out retire, evaluate what would have been a better approach and go from there.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Thanks. That cleared a lot.

The rule for expending Great Scientists in a science victory is save them after you have public schools up, ie leave them idle in cities or near cities until you have Labs +8 turns once you get labs up drop everything including growth for max science for those 8 turns and then burn your great scientists

I didn't get this part at all. Also, you basically never build academies with that strat?


PS: Also, I just stole a worker from CS, made peace, stole another worker. And thus I learned the hard way about the -20 influence resting point.

 

[Browd]

Build academies early -- through to when you are close to researching Public Schools (turn 150 or so, depending on whether you've beelined Schools). Then save GSs (including any from Porcelain Tower or Pisa) until at least 8 turns after Labs are up and fully staffed with specialists, Since GS bulb payoff equals your last 8 turns of beaker production, you should have taken Secularism (+2 beakers for each specialist) and worked all specialist slots (Artists, Writers, Engineers, etc.) for those 8 turns.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Build academies early -- through to when you are close to researching Public Schools (turn 150 or so, depending on whether you've beelined Schools). Then save GSs (including any from Porcelain Tower or Pisa) until at least 8 turns after Labs are up and fully staffed with specialists, Since GS bulb payoff equals your last 8 turns of beaker production, you should have taken Secularism (+2 beakers for each specialist) and worked all specialist slots (Artists, Writers, Engineers, etc.) for those 8 turns.

Ah, I see. It really sucks in-game civilopedia doesn't give that info. In fact, it gives very little information on game mechanics in general.

 

[Resipsa]

Yeah, plant academies until public schools

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Also, is there a way to convince the AI to go to war? I need to eliminate a major cultural runaway civ, but everyone is besties with them, so I can't just go willy nilly and take their capital with tons of wonders without promptly getting gangbanged by their buddies, which are 10 other civs. So I tried bribing others, but they just won't accept any offer. Only Attila is ready to cut some throats.

 

[Izmir Stinger]

1. Buildings. What to build and what not to build? Water mill is pretty useful, but what about windmill or workshop? Does the 1 extra hammer and +10% production increase translate well lategame? Then there are banks and stock exchanges. They aren't worth in low gold cities, are they? Is constabulary good only in the capital? Are shrines even good if you decided to ignore religion? How many pastures justify a stables and how many mines, a forge? If you go wide, are granaries really needed?

Workshops are usually worthwhile, but Windmills are too expensive. I'd only build it after a factory in a city that is intended to generate great engineers to rush spaceship parts with the Order tennent, and that is an uncommon strategy b/c going freedom and buying them with gold is generally more effective. Banks and stock exchanges are only worthwhile in cities working multiple luxury tiles, but also keep an eye on what trade routes other empires are establishing with your empire. Sometimes lucky geography will make one of your cites a very desirable end point for a trade route, and thus make those buildings more attractive in that city. Also worth mentioning, if you take Monarchy from Tradition (recommended), the gold granted by that policy is actually granted as a yield on the city tile, and is thus boosted by these buildings.

Never build the constabulary to mess with enemy spies. If they steal tech from you, it doesn't deprive you of anything, it only benefits them. If they weren't stealing tech from you they'd be using that spy to steal techs from someone else or rigging elections in city states, which would probably benefit them even more. Also, if you can't steal techs from your rivals because you have surpassed them or they have built police stations and it takes too long, the only way to level up your spies is counter-espionage, and constabularies hurt that effort, b/c your defensive spy can only kill their spy on the turn when they try to steal a tech, so slowing that down is counter productive. If you have a very tall empire with insane production, sometimes building police stations everywhere so you can build the national intelligence agency is worth it, otherwise, skip them.

Two pastures justify stables, eventually, and more increase the priority. Forges usually aren't justified without 3+ mines, unless you are cranking out units for domination, or slow building spaceship parts (the +15% bonus applies to them for some reason).

2. Culture. I am a culture whore, but how worth are +1 culture buildings when CS's give a lot more culture from friendships/alliances and landmarks/holy sites/academies with world congress resolution give more culture than all the buildings combined? I always try to build all the culture buildings and as many wonders as I can, but +1 culture is just killing me. It seems only worth if you stuff them with great people.

The best thing to do is adopt a "just in time" policy for your culture buildings beyond monuments. Finish them right before you get a great person or archaeological find to fill the slot. Also have at least one empty amphitheater and museum if you are going conquering, so you can store the spoils of war. Also, your city with guilds can benefit immensely from a broadcast tower, so you need all the culture buildings there as prerequisites.

3. Specialists. Do you have to stuff all the specialist slots if you have them (somewhat a point of getting specialist buildings in the first place)? I try to assign citizens to worktiles manually, but when cities grow, the AI randomly assigns citizens to specialists and then switches over to tiles and that confuses me. Also, when do you start expending great people for immediate results rather than building improvements? An early great scientist with 8 beakers is game breaking, but after Atomic Era it is better to just rush techs. When is the point at which total science from GS outscales the per turn output? Same with great writers.

Ignore the governor, he is corrupt and incompetent. You are smarter than him; do not take cues from his erratic behavior.

Always keep your writer and artist slots filled. Musicians are usually only important for culture victories, you can get away with skipping that guild or not keeping the slots filled all the time. Generally you want to keep all science slots filled at all times, and ignore engineer and merchant slots unless they give better yields than the available tiles, or you have boosted your specialists with various social policies/wonders. Sometimes cites with marginal production need to run engineers for the hammers, but it is vastly preferable to place cities in such a way that this is not necessary.

Make great works with your writers until you have no more slots are you have an ideology, then use them to get ideological tenants. The big exception is if you have an opportunity to host the World's Fair. Try to trigger a golden age with an artist and burn writers at the end of the World's Fair for maximum culture.

In most games I build academies until plastics, then bulb after I've been running research labs for 8 turns (the strength of the bulb is based on your last 8 turns of science output). If it is a domination game I don't go to plastics; instead I start bulbing earlier to get a monopoly on important military techs, like artillery. If a spaceship game, use them and oxford to leapfrog to satellites, then build hubble to get two more.

4. Worker/Scout. I've read a bunch of Deity guides which recommend stealing a worker. Is it really that crucial? And how long does the penalty last? Also, I usually build 2 scouts for that Pangea exploration because it seems that the early extra gold, tech, population, culture, and faith completely justify the time it took to build them. Good or bad thinking?

Scouts for your first two builds on Pangaea is almost always optimal. Your thinking on this matter is the consensus around here. It is invalid on an archipelago unless you are Polynesia.

Worker stealing (a.k.a. enslaving conquered people) is a big boost in the early game. You can win without it, but if your goal is the fastest win time possible - which is how the deity players around here like to challenge themselves - then it is essential. The early advantage snowballs. Because you aren't taking any cities the AI will forget about your warmongering before turn 50.

5. Diplomacy. I noticed that at higher difficulties it becomes much harder to keep CS allies. What happens is that my allied CS gets couped, then next turn I give them money and take them back. The same turn an AI becomes ally with them. Next turn I give money and win the CS back, but the AI immediately supplants me as their ally. It becomes a battle of attrition where I keep sinking money into nothing. Why does the AI do that and how to deal with it?

Some of the leaders are coded to put a high priority on maintaining city state allies (Alex and Sury, in particular). They pick a few that they decide are theirs and will pour enormous resources into keeping them. If you keep fighting them for it, it will eventually sour your relations with them. Unless a particular city state is absolutely essential, because they are your only source of coal or oil or something, usually you should cut your losses and cozy up to a different city state.

6. Military. So far, I am not planning to go for domination victory because it seems to require supreme combats skills and knowledge, and BNW seems to be very punishing of any warmonger in the game. Every time I dream of going ham as Attila, I see Shakas, Attilas, or Genghis Khans in my games who DOW their neighbor and then the rest of the self-righteous AI gangbang them before they even reach the Industrial age. That's not my idea of fun. However, even when playing peacefully, I am still very paranoid and live in constant fear that I am going to get DoW'ed, and good bye that cultural victory. So, what kind of military/how big do you need for peaceful victories if you just want to play defensive?

Ranged units are the key to efficient defense. If you fear your closest neighbor, 4-8 ranged units, kept technologically up to date, will allow you to hold off an unexpected attack for long enough buy/build reinforcements, get your great general, and push them back. If there is unsettled land between you and your neighbors, you can get warning about incoming attacks by putting spotters in the fog of war. If a bunch of units are moving towards you, they WILL attack when they reach your borders; the AI doesn't move around large groups of units for no reason. You can sometimes preempt the DoW by paying them to attack someone else once you see they are coming for you. Be wary of creating monsters, though. Sometimes they will win the war you paid them to fight and now they are stronger, have an experienced army, and are even more bloodthirsty.

 

[joncnunn]

1. Buildings. What to build and what not to build? Water mill is pretty useful, but what about windmill or workshop? Does the 1 extra hammer and +10% production increase translate well lategame? Then there are banks and stock exchanges. They aren't worth in low gold cities, are they? Is constabulary good only in the capital? Are shrines even good if you decided to ignore religion? How many pastures justify a stables and how many mines, a forge? If you go wide, are granaries really needed?

2. Culture. I am a culture whore, but how worth are +1 culture buildings when CS's give a lot more culture from friendships/alliances and landmarks/holy sites/academies with world congress resolution give more culture than all the buildings combined? I always try to build all the culture buildings and as many wonders as I can, but +1 culture is just killing me. It seems only worth if you stuff them with great people.

3. Specialists. Do you have to stuff all the specialist slots if you have them (somewhat a point of getting specialist buildings in the first place)? I try to assign citizens to worktiles manually, but when cities grow, the AI randomly assigns citizens to specialists and then switches over to tiles and that confuses me. Also, when do you start expending great people for immediate results rather than building improvements? An early great scientist with 8 beakers is game breaking, but after Atomic Era it is better to just rush techs. When is the point at which total science from GS outscales the per turn output? Same with great writers.

4. Worker/Scout. I've read a bunch of Deity guides which recommend stealing a worker. Is it really that crucial? And how long does the penalty last? Also, I usually build 2 scouts for that Pangea exploration because it seems that the early extra gold, tech, population, culture, and faith completely justify the time it took to build them. Good or bad thinking?

5. Diplomacy. I noticed that at higher difficulties it becomes much harder to keep CS allies. What happens is that my allied CS gets couped, then next turn I give them money and take them back. The same turn an AI becomes ally with them. Next turn I give money and win the CS back, but the AI immediately supplants me as their ally. It becomes a battle of attrition where I keep sinking money into nothing. Why does the AI do that and how to deal with it?

#1A Watermills: It's a second granary + a small hammer boost -> Going tall, every city.

#1B Workshops: Required building in all cities in order to build the Workshop in your best production city (usually capital), which is a very good boost -> Going tall, every city.

#1C Windmills: Less useful, but if going tall, you'll eventually want them to every city as well. It's just that even factories are better in most cases.

#1D Banks: Not required for any national wonder. You'll want one in your capital though; and it would also be a good idea for cities that the AI has formed a trade route with. Also if you've gone tall, chances are every city is working some luxury tiles, and so will bring in enough gold for the multiplier to be useful.

#1E Stock Exchange: Game is effectively over by then; but on the other hand your cities may run of things to build anyway. The one in the capital is most useful, which may shave a few turns off a diplomatic victory or a freedom induced space victory.

#1F Constability is an indirect requirement to the NIA national wonder. (Every city must have a Police Station, which requires a Constability). Which translates into always build for a tall empire again; but other than the capital, delay until police station is right around the corner.

#1G Shrines are an indirect requirement to the Grand Temple national wonder. Even if you've ignored religion, this provides a big boost in Industrial era for faith based great people. And it's ultra cheap to construct.

#1H Stables, Forges, and all other buildings requiring a local tile improvement: Going tall, they are justified even if there is only one source. The buildings are very early and will pay for themselves many times over.

#2 Culture: Monuments are very cheap to build; if you didn't get them free from Legalism anyway, they are extremely useful. As to the others; their main use is to hold slots for great works. However, Opera Houses are a pre req to the Hermitage National Wonder and Ampitheater is a prereq to Opera House (and Monument a prereq to that) -> Playing tall, you'll eventually want all of these, but unless your about to need a spot for a great work of writing, you'll delay Amphitheater until Opera Houses are around the corner.

#3A: Science spots: Always fill these and make these buildings a priority

#3B: Guild spots: Since you wouldn't be building the guild in the first place if you weren't going to fill those spots, it's in the same boat as above. If food is an issue, use some food cargo ships.

#3C: Engineer slots: only fill if all more useful tiles already worked

#3D: Merchant slots: Unless playing Venice, never fill these spots until there is no risk of actually spawning a Great Merchant.

#4A Diplomatic penalty is a long time. Better to wait for the barbs to steal a worker, and then take it from the barbs. In fact, with the AI often sending unescorted settlers, you can probably just steal from a major AI instead of letting it settle right next to you.

#4B Depends on map size. But if you aren't going Tradition, you probably need a Monument before two scouts would complete.

#5 The last thing you should be doing when the AI coups a city is send money there; their spy is still there and the formula and effect is such that when he retakes it via coup (85% chance if the levels are close) he now has more influence than if you hadn't sent money there. Instead, you should send your own more advanced spy there and coup it back from the AI. Better yet, station your spy there before the AI tried to steal it.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Wow! Very thanks for a much detailed response. Pretty much all I wanted to know.

Also worth mentioning, if you take Monarchy from Tradition (recommended), the gold granted by that policy is actually granted as a yield on the city tile, and is thus boosted by these buildings.

Doesn't Monarchy only benefit the capital? In general, I build market in every city to get the East India Company when I have time for it -- primarily for the +4 gold. Not sure if worth, either.

tall empire

I keep reading in guides and other threads about "tall", but how tall is "tall"? 19, 35, 60 citizens? I've had 35+ capitals in all previous games, but in my current jungle coastal start I'd be happy to break 20 in the capital... admittedly, I didn't utilize internal trade routes and sent them only internationally because i was desperate for gold and science.

The best thing to do is adopt a "just in time" policy for your culture buildings beyond monuments.

Does that mean enabling culture saving in pre-game options?

The big exception is if you have an opportunity to host the World's Fair.

By the way, how feasible is that at higher difficulty levels? I never came first in Emperor+ games, and the Fair in my last game was complete in literally 4 turns.

If a spaceship game, use them and oxford to leapfrog to satellites, then build hubble to get two more.

So for science victories it is better to build Oxford until? What about cultural? I feel like it's better to fill it for theming bonuses, but some guides recommend saving it up for Radar (or something else).

Worker stealing (a.k.a. enslaving conquered people) is a big boost in the early game. You can win without it, but if your goal is the fastest win time possible - which is how the deity players around here like to challenge themselves - then it is essential. The early advantage snowballs

Yeah. I already tried it, and it felt great.

Ranged units are the key to efficient defense. If you fear your closest neighbor, 4-8 ranged units, kept technologically up to date, will allow you to hold off an unexpected attack for long enough buy/build reinforcements, get your great general, and push them back.

I see. So building some early military units is essential? Going for science/cultural, I always find myself beelining the top branch of the tech tree and lagging in the bottom part, so my units are always behind, unless I steal tech from someone like the Aztecs.

In general, I have a difficulty balancing unit and building production. It just seems like all the buildings give a lot more the earlier you get them.

You can sometimes preempt the DoW by paying them to attack someone else once you see they are coming for you.

I noticed that the later the game goes, the more difficult it is to bribe the AI to go to war, even when they hate each other. I assume it's better to sneakily bribe early wars and keep AI busy in small skirmishes unless one of them gets way ahead?

Some of the leaders are coded to put a high priority on maintaining city state allies (Alex and Sury, in particular). They pick a few that they decide are theirs and will pour enormous resources into keeping them. If you keep fighting them for it, it will eventually sour your relations with them. Unless a particular city state is absolutely essential, because they are your only source of coal or oil or something, usually you should cut your losses and cozy up to a different city state.

By the way, how important is Patronage? CS's give so much culture, faith, or food that it makes them a mandatory option in almost every game. I keep trying to make Piety work, but it just feels Patronage is much superior in comparison.

 

[Laurwin]

I just played game on king difficulty, as Huns (first time playing BNW)

First I wiped my own continent clean and then just expanded, Tall and Wide to be honest. For tall and wide, your empire will basically be EPICALLY POWERFUL. Two problems are, finding the sources of happiness for your empire's citizens.

Second problem is actually getting enough gold, in my opinion. Tall empire can work many good tiles, but practically speaking wide empire jnust needs ton of roads. Building maintenance was almost as big chunk from my income as unit maintenance in my own king game as huns. I went btw, tradition full, commerce full, rationalism trade posts, plus bunch of order policies.

What gave me happiness in this scenaario? Well, the bulk of midgame and endgame happiness comes from protectionism policy of commerce tree (more happyness per each type of luxury). (patronage might be useful for the same purposes, if you have city states with many types of luxuries)

I won conquest and I actually forgot to use a bunch of my GS for anything lol (in the mid game I had about 3 great scientists fortified near my main cities just lounging about, on the road, I forgot about them for like 100 years and wondered why my science sux LOL)

my good cities including capital were about 20-25 pop. I captured some smaller city states thoughg, to commandeer their uranium deposits into my better care.
In my late game atatck on the second continent. There was absolutly backwards Sweden, and moderately backwards assyria. Assyria was my first target. I made massive invasion armada with carriers, bombers nukes, battleships and tanks and infantry, together with some artillery (from good old battering rams!). Nuke aattacks wiped out Assyrias reinforcements, and bomber strikes finished off what was left, then I just swept in. Crushing sweden was only matter of 3 turns really...

 

[spoko22]

Cool tip for making wars: let's say you want Civ A to help you destroy Civ B. Ask Civ B what they want for declaring war to Civ A: most often they say it's impossible BUT they change their mind if you give them a lot GPT. DoW them immediately after they agree and you have them stuck with two wars and you don't even have to pay them.

 

[adcarrymaokai]

I also keep forgetting to ask: how does the AI cheat on wonders? Say, I want to build the Hanging Gardens. The city says it will take 24 turns, but 7 turns later the city grows, and that shaves off 2 turns, making it into a 22-turn Hanging Gardens. Now, the AI completes this wonder 2 turns before me. I reload the game 22 turns back and switch tiles, which gives me 21 turns to build the Hanging Gardens. Then after 10 turns the city grows, and that shaves 2 turns, so effectively I get a 19-turn Hanging Gardens. Now, the AI finishes this wonder 2 turns before me again, even though it should be 1 turn behind from the previous replay. Is there a system in the game that prevents the human player from getting certain wonders at higher levels? I've noticed Great Library going away turn 34-37 every time. Is there a timer for Hanging Gardens as well, or should I just bee-line and snatch it right away?

 

[adcarrymaokai]

Cool tip for making wars: let's say you want Civ A to help you destroy Civ B. Ask Civ B what they want for declaring war to Civ A: most often they say it's impossible BUT they change their mind if you give them a lot GPT. DoW them immediately after they agree and you have them stuck with two wars and you don't even have to pay them.

I've done this back in Civ3, but I feel like with the new diplomacy it's gonna backfire really bad. Besides, they can make peace with each other and then declare war on you jointly. This might work against someone like Attila, though, since you don't want to be friends with him ever.