New to V:BNW, Old to cIV

[Mknn]

The reviews of BNW intrigued me, so, after years of being a purely cIV player, I played about two hours of BNW last night.

I've looked, but evidently not very well, for some guides to help experienced cIV players adapt to the, um, brave new world, but haven't found any. Are there such, and if so, could someone help a fella' out with a few links?

Trying to make sense of the new tech tree, the social policies, etc. What the standard initial builds are, how long a city can stay unprotected thanks to the new defense mechanic (my instinct is not very long, but you no longer have to keep a unit home the minute barbs start spawning), some insight into how early to build trade routes, stuff like that.

Clearly these questions are skewed towards the early game cuz, you know, that's as far as I've poked around. Thanks!

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

the standard initial builds are, how long a city can stay unprotected thanks to the new defense mechanic (my instinct is not very long, but you no longer have to keep a unit home the minute barbs start spawning), some insight into how early to build trade routes, stuff like that.

Clearly these questions are skewed towards the early game cuz, you know, that's as far as I've poked around. Thanks!

The city defence is nice, but once you have a worker improving things it is essential to prevent barbarians from getting to the improvements. They waste no time before pillaging!

Early in the game I build trade routes when my cashflow goes negative, but only if I can defend the route.

My usual build order is scout, monument. After that it varies by situation.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Unprotected until your 1st worker. Starting you can use a base of Scout-Monument for 1st 2 builds. Tech I always go Pottery-Writing-Mining-Calender. Pottery for shrines and to Open writing. Writing for obvious reason, Library's and Embassy's. Mining for Hammers!! And Calender for Happy. Trade routes, you want them ASAP!! When to build? As soon as you can do it. They make all the difference!!

Venice is just insane in this area. Very boring until 1200ish, but if you can last, it is all over!!

Depending on level you play at, you can try for religion. It is well worth it if you can, but do not kill your game to get one.

 

[_invy_]

Yup you need a warrior home when you see barbs to protect your worker and your farms and mines. Archer is nice too. Versus AIs, early in game three archers are usually enough to delay or stop unexpected attacks.
About policies standard is to go Liberty, if you see more spaces around, or Tradition for fewer cities (up to 4 usually). You can experiment with Honor and Piety also. Generally in Civ5 you don't build many cities, just a few close to resources.

 

[BSPollux]

It all depends on your civ and the difficulty youve chosen. Here are some thoughts on the start. This is for prince or below and that you are not going for something special but for a well rounded nation.

Set your first research towards shrines.

Your early building choices are basically
a) two scouts (map, goodies, can def your workers/improvements while city kills barbs)
or
b) a monument (basicaly tripples your culture gain)
Each choice will take just as long as your research. As soon as you can build shrines you want to do so, because religion is better the early you start it. Everything will be cheaper and you will have better choices for your believes.

If you dont plan to be realy tiny, then Liberty is the policy to go. Get the +1culture/city and the free worker first. Its quite a kickstarter for your early growth.

Now it becomes very situational:
If you got a lot of food and production around your capital but fewer gold, you should go for a traderoute early. It takes quite some time to build but you need some way to earn cash. Sent it to a citystate or another civ to earn cash. Be aware that the route can be plundered, so you might need to defend its path. Trade rouds can be shown permanently on the map if you toggle the option (left of minimap).
If you got enough cash because you got the right luxuries in place, then I'd suggest to start explanding right away. Make sure to settle somewhat compact, as roads between citys will cost 1g/square and the income of cityconections is quite low between small citys. So connecting several small, distant citys can cripple your fragile economy. Rule of thumb: Dont connect citys if you need to add more roads then the citys has pop.

If you build a granary in your capital you can send your traderoutes to your new citys to deliver extra food, so they will grow insanely fast. You might need colosseums soon though.

If you happen to be near a desert then going for the 'desert folclore' pantenon and petra wonder will be very strong. Tile yields will be insane there and you get an extra traderoute. If you got a good city on the coast the collossus is great. An extra trade route, a free trade ship and some extra cash will take care of your early economy.

If you are playing defencive then you wont need a lot of military. A few basic units will do as long as you position them smartly. Ranged units are to be prefered. Early composite men will be extremly strong in the hands of any human player.

I just realized I could write way more but dont realy know what you want to read, so I'll just stop here and finaly get some breakfast at 3pm

 

[Mknn]

This is all fantastic, please keep it coming! Great stuff, and really, really useful to try to figure out what matters and how to translate everything into happiness and gold.

 

[True_Candyman]

Key thing in the early game particularly is growth. More food is better, so get granaries up quickly, especially if you have wheat/deer/bananas around. That will grow your cities faster and make them more productive quicker and generate you more science - just beware of your happiness, each citizen drains it!

Get a worker relatively early too. If you're wanting to expand quickly, get the free one through the liberty policy. If you want to take another tree, you're going to have to fit it somwhere in your production queue, or else you'll have to generate a lot of gold / get lucky with ruins. I would recommend building one probably by turn 30 latest, preferably sooner but it depends on your situation and what tiles you have.

Tiles wise, you want to focus on improving luxuries first and then whatever else you think your city needs a boost in, be it food or production. You want to get the luxuries improved asap so you have happiness to grow your cities and expand.

For expanding, you can either hold back and focus on wonders (particularly the national college which costs more per city you have and is pretty vital) or else you can expand quick if you see some lovely spots that you may have competition for. Generally if i see good spots for 2/3 more cities full of luxuries and other resources i'll grab them early sacraficing a bit of growth and development in my capital. Especially if i'm surrounded by opponents. Generally speaking you'll want at least one new unique luxury in each city you found in order to keep your happiness steady and positive as you improve and expand further. And try to keep up workers equal to the number of cities you have if possible!

Essentially, experiment and adapt to situations. Go for what you think is a good idea, and if it doesn't work change it next time. Any strategy you use will be sacrificing something else, so focus on the positives, don't worry what you are missing out on, you can fix that later.

 

[TomKQT]

I think you should just look for some technical info about the game (how it works), but some build orders should always be up to you. You'll find out what suits you best.
What I mean - everyone plays differently and every map is different. If a lot of people say scout-monument, then I say I rarely build scout and I don't always build monument. I tend to start with a worker, which takes a lot of turns and then I often am ready to build a wonder.
You can get monument for free from a social policy.

I don't say that the scout-monument build order is wrong, I just say that everyone plays differently and you really shouldn't stick to what the majority thinks it's the most effective build order. The game isn't fun if you stick to some pattern and repeat it in every game. Adapt to the situation.

 

[manu-fan]

Just one thing. When starting to play BNW, Shoshone is a great Civ to play. The Pathfinders are great, and the big city tile area is great also.

Cheers.

 

[seasnake]

The biggest change: City placement is more important than number of cities. Every time you build a city you slow your science, ding your happiness and up your costs for national wonders and social policies. So you only want to place a city if you know it will grow into a very good one.

This sometimes means you'll have large patches of unclaimed land near to or even in the middle of your empire. But plopping a city just because there's room is a huge mistake.

 

[BSPollux]

The biggest change: City placement is more important than number of cities. Every time you build a city you slow your science, ding your happiness and up your costs for national wonders and social policies. So you only want to place a city if you know it will grow into a very good one.

This sometimes means you'll have large patches of unclaimed land near to or even in the middle of your empire. But plopping a city just because there's room is a huge mistake.

It has to be realy bad land to make a worthless city. The very most spots are usefull, especialy now that you can speed up the initial growth with traderoutes.

If you are a player who starts a game with a very strict plan on how to achive the fastest [victory_condition] possible then you might be right that placing city x is not usefull. But if you have any fun in building an empire then most citys will be worth founding. Just sometimes the payoff will come after Sir Numbercrunch has allready won

 

[Jatta Pake]

Welcome to Civ 5.

The game can now certainly stand alongside Civ 4 in terms of depth. It's been awhile since I played Civ 4 but here are some thoughts:

Fewer Units
The 1upt (one unit per tile) means you won't be cranking out units like you did in Civ 4. This seems like a negative at first and it takes some getting used to. For initial defense, I usually build an archer for my cities. This means I get two shots at invaders (city plus archer). But you also need ground forces so build a warrior or two for mobile defense.

Zones of Control
The other effect of 1pt is that zones of control become more pronounced. Study the terrain. Utilize choke points. I love using cheap Scouts to block or slow enemies. Scouts are awesome and provide critical early warning of invaders. Scouts can also kill off weakened enemy units if you use them right.

Gold
You don't have cottages anymore and gold is scarce in the early game. I'm still trying to come to terms with the changes in BNW but I haven't been critically hurt by negative gold per turn. It slows science but it's not a death knell like it is in Civ 4. You can recover from a broken economy fairly quickly so don't panic if you're broke.

Happiness
You don't have corruption but you do need to pay attention to global happiness. I'd rather have negative gold over unhappy people. Unhappy people slows production and weakens military units. You can trade away your only copy of a given resource so be careful not to make your people unhappy.

Interesting Choices
I think the most fascinating thing about Civ 5 is that you don't have a single optimal strategy for the early game. You have so many choices. Do you progress Jack of All Trades style with a civ good at everything, or do you specialize to harness a particular edge? Religion, City-States, Wonders, Science, War, and Expansion starts are all viable strategies. I think many players consider them situational but player preference also accounts for some starts.

Victory
This new expansion seems to lessen the "runaway civ" scenarios. In other words, neither the AI nor the player seems to be able to easily break out and cruise to victory. You can watch a massive science lead disappear due to enemy AI spies and a domination victory prevented by diplomacy and nuclear weapons. Some players find this frustrating but I find it makes the game far more interesting and compelling throughout.

 

[Mknn]

Again, many thanks. Started a new game as the Shoshone as recommended, and the impact here has helped make a lot of it more comprehensible. Decided to go the LIBERTY/PYRAMIDS route, largely because of the free units. So far, so good, although it's still not clear to me how much the city states actually *matter*, that is, whether I should really be concerned about them being friendly, etc.

I realized how long it had been since I actually played cIV--not only had I not played at all in a while, but almost all of my play for a few years had been FFH.

 

[bcaiko]

So far, so good, although it's still not clear to me how much the city states actually *matter*, that is, whether I should really be concerned about them being friendly, etc.

In some cases they may not, and can just be some nice bonuses. Most players find the Cultural City-States worth fighting over, though, as the culture bonus they give for being friends (and even moreso for being allies) is substantial and builds social policies quicker.

City-States can fit nicely within your strategy (Maritime for food if going tall, Religious for Faith when getting your Religion off the ground) or be great "fixers" when you have a problem (Mercantile for Happiness relief, and I can't tell you how many times a timely free Keshek from a Militaristic City-State has appeared just as an AI has declared war on me [Militaristic city-states gift allies a Unique Unit from a civ not in the game...you can hover over the word "Militaristic" on their screen to see which unit they'll give]).

City-States often have some of the best territory in the game, usually including the natural wonders. So, they can also be a free city if you decide to take them over. They can also be a knife into a new continent this way for someone going Domination Victory, creating an established area for landing military units to start taking over a continent.

And, of course you need City-State allies to shore up your votes for the Diplomatic Victory at the U.N.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Early friendship from a CS is very,very valuable. I would reccomend you always have some units hunting barbs for the CS quest. If they are your ally, they are not Alex's.

 

[Mknn]

Small sample size, but all of the requests to kill barbs have been from city states where I would have to tromp through their area to get to the barbs. Is the "cost" of trespassing worth the bonus of barb-killing for them?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Small sample size, but all of the requests to kill barbs have been from city states where I would have to tromp through their area to get to the barbs. Is the "cost" of trespassing worth the bonus of barb-killing for them?

Yes. The trespassing isn't a big deal. Don't bully a city-state though. They drop quests when you do.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Small sample size, but all of the requests to kill barbs have been from city states where I would have to tromp through their area to get to the barbs. Is the "cost" of trespassing worth the bonus of barb-killing for them?

Not for me, but you do not suffer that penelty when embarked. If it is one of those, 1 CS on Isthmus and one behind, I would skip that one.

 

[BSPollux]

AFAIK the moment the CS asks you to kill barbs the trespassing penalty is lifted for you.

When you meet CS, pledge protection. That will raise the resting point with that CS by +10. So you are only 20 away from friends and 50 from allies. A quest will score somewhat like 40 or 50, barbs like 10. So you can very well 'accidentaly' reach that status and sack in the bonus