returning to Civ after 2years - got questions

[hlx]

hi all,
I recently picked up BNW on Steam and decided to re ignite my Civ addiction.
I played a bit of Civ5 2 years ago or so, before that it was Civ1 and Civ2 in the olden days.

I do have a couple of questions:

My preferred playstyle was early city expansion, big on science, with military push around gunpowder. With changes in BNW I would like to play a bit more with culture so my question is - which civilization you recommend? I used to play mostly with Babylon if that helps.

I am quite obsessed with perfecting my early game start. I remember some cool plays as Babylon with getting Great Person fast, building workshop on the hill and turning a city into production power horse. While this is gone - I was thinking you guys might have some tips and pointers on how fully use first 30-40 turns?

One thing I seem to be missing is what are "theming bonuses"? I understand this is new but I haven't got much info on it - could you guys explain it please what it is and how to make best use of it?

Those are my starting questions - I'm sure I'll have more. Back to reading older threads here while waiting for your help. Any kind of help you throw my way is greatly appreciated.

-thanks

 

[adwcta]

Just play a game, and you'll see what the theming bonuses are. Don't worry about them. Just think of them as +50% tourism to whatever great works they apply to (as a base #, and that number gets multiplicatively, not additively, higher with +theming bonus things like Aesthetics or France's UA). In the game, you'll see what you have to do to actually get the bonus... it's like a super easy minigame that's hard to screw up as long as you put a tiny bit of effort into it.

First 30-40 turns depends on map, civ, etc. This is an extremely broad and unhelpful question. Probably the biggest change in BNW is that you'll want a caravan out early if you have an AI neighbor, and you'll want to defend that caravan (and any caravans the AI sends to you) from Barbs, who will kill the caravan in one hit. AI acts more friendly to neighbors now, because you actually have to be close (within 10 tiles initially) to use caravans, which is your main source of gold in the game now. No gold = no military upkeep. So, early game is peaceful. Barbs are annoying. If you play on Deity, caravans will get you more early science than a library, and they make gold instead of costing gold. Completely viable now to delay the library if you start with a neighbor (of course, extra science never hurt anyone).

The culture game doesn't really trigger until mid-game. Until then, all you can really do is place your guilds on a river and work them. The timing here isn't that important, since by the end-game, when it really matters, the difference of a 50 turn delay in the beginning is just 15% usage of your last great work (not a big deal). In early game, you can get ahead a bit by picking up some key wonders (Parthenon, Oracle, Petra, Pisa, Sistine, Globe Theater, any wonder that gives +GE). In the mid-late game there are some wonders that you really should be guaranteed to pick up (Uffizi, Louvre, Eifel, Broadway). When you hit archeology, you'll be pumping out archeologists, and you want enough artifacts to fit all your museums and to turn all the ruins in your workable territory into landmarks, so it's a scramble if you're playing peaceful wide (which usually puts your less ahead in tech at this point anyway). Not an issue if you're playing tall, but less tourism, so you'll need to compensate by picking up more early wonders. If you're playing militarily, then it doesn't matter much, since you can just go take over whoever has the most artifacts/wonders. The real tourism gains don't start until you get Hotels, and it ramps up huge when you get Internet, so you're set as long as you have everything under your control by Hotels.

Policies: Aesthetics is more or less a must in peaceful play (it lets you faith-buy great musicians). Everything else is gravy. Commerce probably synergizes the least well. Be careful if you're doing Aesthetics/Rationalism... there's not a single +happiness policy in those two trees, so you'll need outside sources, even if you're going tall.

Ideology: Autocracy for aggressive military, Order for peaceful (or if everyone has moderately similarly culture defense), Freedom for everything else.

Religion: If you can pull it off, pairing having a religion with World Congress gives you world religion, which gives +50% tourism output from your holy city. It's not worth it if you lose open borders / trade route because of this. Also, sacred sites reformation belief lets you end the game super-early by going ICS. Finally, there's a belief that gives +5 tourism to Hermitage, but that's not terribly meaningful.

Civs: Major Synergy (Brazil, France, Polynesia). Some Synergy (Austria, Sweden, India, Assyria, Japan, Egypt, Maya, Poland).

 

[hlx]

thanks for that.

regarding the opening strategy - let me try to narrow what I am asking for. generally I would like to go wide while maintaining above decent science output. big questions for is should I go with early settlers production or spend first 40+ turns on my first city and then expand? I generally like to have around 10-15 my own cities which then I work on - which civ would be best for such play? and what if any tips would you suggest for optimizing such opening?

 

[Lay_Lay]

Culture victory is too complex for someone playing for the first time since 2 yrs.
You don't need to understand tourism or culture yet.
Win some Science, Dom, Diplo games to learn how to play BNW.
A lot of us veterans here who have won a bunch of Immortal level games, have yet to win a culture victory - certainly would have to drop a level to do so.

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

thanks for that.

regarding the opening strategy - let me try to narrow what I am asking for. generally I would like to go wide while maintaining above decent science output. big questions for is should I go with early settlers production or spend first 40+ turns on my first city and then expand? I generally like to have around 10-15 my own cities which then I work on - which civ would be best for such play? and what if any tips would you suggest for optimizing such opening?

Stop right there. Settling 10-15 cities is not something doable in this game unless you play on the huge maps. Even if you can do it, it's not the most efficient way to play now because every city you own increases tech cost by 5% (2.5% on huge), so you will also need to grow every city, and that requires Happiness, which simply isn't possible that early in the game.

You can probably do decent up to 6-8 city, but past that it's hard to justify the benefits of new built cities. Learn to make do with 3-4 cities because most games can be won with that. You can go wider by capturing cities instead.

But if you insist on doing this, then might as well do the current ICS Sacred Sites cheese. Basically you take the Sacred Sites Reformation Belief (available in the Piety policies) to make your faith-bought buildings (Pagodas, Monasteries, Mosques, Cathedrals) generate 2 Tourism each. Keep a tightest possible knit of cities ignoring the terrain yield, happiness, and growth (pretty much everything!) and keep making cities and you'll eventually win Culture by making your opponents wear blue jeans in Medieval.

 

[hlx]

ok so assuming 10-15 was just a dream from era of Civ1 and Civ2 - how should I go about having a healthy 6-8 city empire? should I settle early on and then focus on growing the cities or should I work on first city and afterwards produce 7 settlers?

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

You can start spamming settlers after you pick the free settlers policy from Liberty. It gives 50% bonus to settler production as well.

 

[hlx]

You can start spamming settlers after you pick the free settlers policy from Liberty. It gives 50% bonus to settler production as well.

right, I thought there was something more to it, thanks

 

[Erneiz Hyde]

There IS more to it, such as minding your Happiness and growth. Only settle in areas that has unique luxes or some copies if you didn't have some already to sell. Horses, Elephants and Stones can yield extra happiness from buildings as well, so keep a look out for those. Get happiness enhancing pantheon and Religion bonuses when it's available. etc etc. Just give it some try first, then you can come back with a more refined and specific questions.

 

[adwcta]

right, I thought there was something more to it, thanks

So, go Liberty if you want to go wide.
I've actually been playing on and off with peaceful wide-Liberty games on Immortal/Deity, where I try to maintain zero military while spreading to 6-8 cities.

Unless you start out with a happiness mechanic in the UA/UB, it's pretty much impossible to spread 6 cities in the first 100 turns and grow them to be even medium sized cities, since you won't find more than 4-5 unique luxuries in any area. I like to do a 3/4 - 3/4 split, where I use my initial 3/4 cities to carve out an area of land for myself where I can eventually fit 3/4 more cities. Spread along natural barriers like jungle, desert, mountains so the AI doesn't throw a fit early. Second wave of settlement comes right after Hermitage, before Archeologists. Religion really helps, and have one mercantile CS ally (+10 happiness total for just one CS ally).

 

[KnightAndDay]

You could try a France game to get the hang of theming bonuses. I did a cultural victory with France on emperor recently. I settled 3 cities and remained peaceful with neighbours the whole game. One thing to think about is WHEN to expend your great artists, writers and musicians for great works. The theming bonuses hinge around what era (and from which civilization) the work was created. If you're close to entering a new era and you find yourself needing a few great works from the same era to get the theming bonus, you might be better off waiting until you get the new era before expending your great person.

It'll make sense once you play with the whole great work thing for a couple of games!

 

[KnightAndDay]

And depening on what difficulty level you're playing on, try for one or a few of the wonders that house great works. Don't feel like you need to grab all of them though, that's overkill.

Great works of art are the trickiest of the 3 types; you either need a wonder or some religious buildings to house them until you get to the late-renaissance/industrial era. Besides the one you can house in your palace that is.