A Civ5 Guide for the Civ4 Veteran *Updated 9/24*

[Corbeau]

I did note that it is a good way to get social policies though, it's just not a great way.

Name a better one, early-game. Monuments take hammers. Stonehenge takes hammers and tech. No other leader bonus can replace them - Monte locks you into bumrushing if you want to get anything worthwhile out of his bonus, and it's still less culture.

France is like the Zerg - born to fast-expand.

 

[Trickster7135]

Name a better one, early-game. Monuments take hammers. Stonehenge takes hammers and tech. No other nation bonus can replace them. France is like the Zerg - born to fast-expand.

Sadly, Alexander. Defend a cultural city-state from a barbarian, donate gold, boom, +8 culture for at least 60 turns, as well as a free resource or two. And if you're expanding cities quickly, your population will never be large enough in any one city to need to work more than the initial hexes - and nearby resources can be bought.

I think France would have a "good" quality ability if it only scaled through the ages, say start at +1 in ancient age and gain an additional +1 for every age after that. Oh yea, and don't become obsolete. What the heck is up with that?

 

[Alexfrog]

Regarding the updated version of which leaders are good and bad:

Imo, Rome is one of the very worst abilities. Given that you have a small number of cities, and they should be specialized, only some of the buildings should be duplicated.


On the other hand, Siam's ability of +50% food and culture from city states is among the top 5. This is an extremely strong ability, as getting food from maritime city states is very good, and you get 50% more.

 

[Corbeau]

Sadly, Alexander. Defend a cultural city-state from a barbarian, donate gold, boom, +8 culture for at least 60 turns, as well as a free resource or two. And if you're expanding cities quickly, your population will never be large enough in any one city to need to work more than the initial hexes - and nearby resources can be bought.

Hate to break it to you, but that's still not as fast. That requires having military in the right place at the right time, and having the gold (which isn't free either) to spend on bribes.

Plus getting those "nearby" resources for free can be a lot of gold - enough to spend on city state bribes, potentially. I've been experimenting with a dedicated rex as France, and have been able to bribe a maritime city-state to "Ally" in large part because of the ~300 gold I saved through border pop resources.

Not to say that Nappy is as good as Alexander overall. I happen to think that Alex and the Greeks are downright overpowered. Hoplites are merely nice, but city-states are awesome and Companion Cavalry are downright insane.

 

[Trickster7135]

Hate to break it to you, but that's still not as fast. That requires having military in the right place at the right time, and having the gold (which isn't free either) to spend on bribes.

Plus getting those "nearby" resources for free can be a lot of gold - enough to spend on city state bribes, potentially. I've been experimenting with a dedicated rex as France, and have been able to bribe a maritime city-state to "Ally" in large part because of the ~300 gold I saved through border pop resources.

Not to say that Nappy is as good as Alexander overall. I happen to think that Alex and the Greeks are downright overpowered. Hoplites are merely nice, but city-states are awesome and Companion Cavalry are downright insane.

You keep on mentioning REXing. What difficulty are you playing on? REXing is damn near impossible in the Civ4 sense on the harder difficulties, at least if you're building military units instead of colosseums.

 

[Corbeau]

You keep on mentioning REXing. What difficulty are you playing on? REXing is damn near impossible in the Civ4 sense on the harder difficulties, at least if you're building military units instead of colosseums.

Deity.

Not that I'm good enough to actually win on Deity, but I was curious whether it could be done under the worst happiness restrictions. It can, if you keep expanding on top of happiness resources and have a good sense of when to build a combat unit or two to keep the barbs off. Geography is probably a significant factor.

It's definitely much, much easier on lower difficulties though. Not having a (real) army is much less punishing on the lower levels. For frame of reference: I started at King upon picking up Civ 5, and am thinking that I need to move up a notch after picking up the basic differences from IV and stomping in my last two games.

 

[Trickster7135]

Deity.

Not that I'm good enough to actually win on Deity, but I was curious whether it could be done under the worst happiness restrictions. It can, if you keep expanding on top of happiness resources and have a good sense of when to build a combat unit or two to keep the barbs off.

It's definitely much, much easier on lower difficulties though. Not having a (real) army is much less punishing on the lower levels.

Okay, so my question is: how many cities are you settling in your REX strategy? I find it hard to have more than two or three (if I'm lucky) happiness resources nearby, so that's a limit of about three or four cities. Or perhaps you're setting your population limits very low? What population per city do you shoot for in the early game? I usually go with three or four cities at four population each, and that's taking into account extra happiness from trade or city-states. It's not til I spam colosseums I find I can continue to expand (in this case, through war since most good territory is claimed by then).

 

[Corbeau]

If we're talking Deity, yeah, 3-4 sounds about right depending on the luxury resources. On King, you can probably manage twice that (I am about to in my current game). I suppose that part of the question is how fast you reach that wall, though. First 50-70 turns? I'm not that practiced (or patient) with micromanagement and the overall mechanics, so I imagine that it could be done faster than I can do it myself.

Also, low population isn't as bad as you might think when you take into account that each city gets a free tile worked (it's base tile). Not so good for research, but pretty sweet for hammers.

I suppose it's not the classic Worker -> Settler universal build order of pre-IV civ games, but I keep hearing that fast expansion is dead outright when I don't think that's the case.

 

[Trickster7135]

If we're talking Deity, yeah, 3-4 sounds about right depending on the luxury resources. On King, you can probably manage twice that. I suppose that part of the question is how fast you reach that wall, though. First 50-70 turns? I'm not that practiced (or patient) with micromanagement and the overall mechanics, so I imagine that it could be done faster than I can do it myself.

I suppose it's not the classic Worker -> Settler universal build order of pre-IV civ games, but I keep hearing that fast expansion is dead outright when I don't think that's the case.

Rapid Expansion isn't "dead" outright, it just means something very different in Civ5. Building your first three or four cities before colloseums come online would be considered rapidly expanding, while Civ4 would be double that number, at least, with only the rather pathetic distance maintenance cost (at least during classical era) to worry about.

What I really want to know - and I think after a few months playing we'll all come to a conclusion about this - is if rapid expansion is even a good idea. Having to build a settler, another worker, and a military unit to protect the new city might not be worth the production when you can use the same happiness cap to simply increase the population of your current cities. Sometimes you start with two luxuries right by the capital - and nothing else nearby. How many cities do you found? Do you try and cover the map, or focus on building a strong infrastructure in your capital? You could even get away with founding no cities in that situation, if you build your population faster than the AI by not wasting happiness on number of cities, you'll be able to tech to swordsman or horsemen very quickly - and have a lot of production in your capital to start spamming units.

 

[yanner39]

Just to add to the conversation...What's the opportunity cost of Rexxing and is it worth it? I mean, never mind the happiness issue, which can be crippling depending on the map (in my current game, Monty and Askia were offering lopsided deals for luxury resources - it just wasn't worth it).

Because of the low production, there HAS to be an opportunity cost. Is getting out 2 early settlers worth missing out on Stonehenge? Is it worth not getting a few military out for protection and/or gold from barb encampments? Is it worth working unimproved tiles because you haven't produced a worker?

Final question: If Rexxing even needed? In my current game as Alexander, there was more than enough land for me, Montezuma and Askia to settle. Montezuma did start off quickly, claiming land and getting 3 or 4 cities quickly, but so what? He was generating negative cashflow per turn, never had any cash so city-states were out of the question. Askia didn't rex at all. I quietly and slowly got 3 cites, then a fourth....I settled as my happiness permitted.

Here's the kicker....I was smaller than Montezuma, but because the cities in my smaller empire were bigger, my tech rate was higher. When Monty DOWed on Askia, I didn't want him to get bigger so I swoop in with my smaller but more advanced army (I had a couple of trebs and companion cavalary), and destroyed Monty's army. Plus...I had 6 allies in city-states so when Monty tried to send his troop by the allied city-states' borders, they were attacked...

See...Expanding to less cities, but getting more city-states I think is more effective than Rexxing.

 

[Trickster7135]

Just to add to the conversation...What's the opportunity cost of Rexxing and is it worth it? I mean, never mind the happiness issue, which can be crippling depending on the map (in my current game, Monty and Askia were offering lopsided deals for luxury resources - it just wasn't worth it).

Because of the low production, there HAS to be an opportunity cost. Is getting out 2 early settlers worth missing out on Stonehenge? Is it worth not getting a few military out for protection and/or gold from barb encampments? Is it worth working unimproved tiles because you haven't produced a worker?

Final question: If Rexxing even needed? In my current game as Alexander, there was more than enough land for me, Montezuma and Askia to settle. Montezuma did start off quickly, claiming land and getting 3 or 4 cities quickly, but so what? He was generating negative cashflow per turn, never had any cash so city-states were out of the question. Askia didn't rex at all. I quietly and slowly got 3 cites, then a fourth....I settled as my happiness permitted.

Here's the kicker....I was smaller than Montezuma, but because the cities in my smaller empire were bigger, my tech rate was higher. When Monty DOWed on Askia, I didn't want him to get bigger so I swoop in with my smaller but more advanced army (I had a couple of trebs and companion cavalary), and destroyed Monty's army. Plus...I had 6 allies in city-states so when Monty tried to send his troop by the allied city-states' borders, they were attacked...

See...Expanding to less cities, but getting more city-states I think is more effective than Rexxing.

This is the point I'm trying to make. Civ4 vets have had REXing ingrained into their brains so long, it seems to counter instinct to not REX. I'm not trying to say it has no place at all - only to very seriously consider the alternatives.

 

[yanner39]

Just to add that I am not completely dismissing what Corbeau's saying. Because of work and family, I haven't played the game as much I would have wanted.

Only concern to this point is with a minimum number of cities, how much research will I be able to generate later in the game to research the space ship techs? I mean, from what I've heard and read, it will be very hard to grow the cities to size 36? So where will the beakers come from?

I know city-states provide beakers as well as the rationalism SP.

Like I said, I haven't played late in the game yet, so I can't really don't know. Hopefully, it would be a total surprise.

 

[Mutineer]

May be I am mistaken, but city grow slow down after about size 8 a lot.
I am beginning to think that there not mach point to grow city bigger then this size with out grow bonuses. And grow bonuses are not that big, 33% from tradition for capital and 25% from we love king. So at best we can reasonably grow city to 10 and capital to may be 14 max.

So, how many ties city really need? especially after grow become too expensive, stagnate cities with specialists or production ties would be probably optimum.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I must protest regarding Washington's UA classification. I would love an ability that makes me explore (read: find ruins and city states faster) easier. The military intelligence bonus is also nice. I would also love an ability that allows me to obtain important resources near my borders easier. I'd rate it as decent.

 

[This is Aru]

Your understanding of how Great People are produced in Civ V seems to be flawed. It's not the same as Civ IV where one will pop after X Great People Points, each one is grown individually.

You can pop a Great Merchant and a Great Artist on the same turn. Having one kind of specialist producing points does not detract from any other type of Great Person.

 

[Trickster7135]

Having one kind of specialist producing points does not detract from any other type of Great Person.

Yes it does. Every Great Person born increases the great person points need for the next great person by 100 points. This is why I emphasis only building on type of great person - whichever type is most useful to your strategy.

 

[Gozert]

At least it's no more gamble which one will appear and you can manually manipulate which you will get.

 

[Ex Mudder]

WRT Russia / Catherine, I find the UA very useful in the early game. I once had a capital city with 4 horses w/in 3 tiles, on a grassland start. I had 10 production instead of 6 with them worked, and 14 instead of 10 with them pastured. Given the paucity of production before you get civil service to support your mines, it helped me do quite well. But even a +1 production 12 turns in can pay off in the long run.

It also works well on more normal grassland starts, where strategic resources are few and far between, compared to plains. Your 2 horses or 2 iron mean 4 horsemen or 4 swordsmen, and you can settle near luxury resources instead of settling cities to grab all nearby strategic resources.

You can also trade them to other Civs for cash, luxuries, or other strategic resources. And I wonder how many nuclear power plants a late game Russia could build, and still have some Uranium left over for nukes.

 

[Vordeo]

Interesting read, haven't finished everything, but just wanted to comment on your UA ratings.

First off, the game needs a crapload of balancing. Some civs are just significantly weaker than others, and I really hope this all gets fixed at some point (or that someone mods everything to be balanced).

I agree with most of your ratings, just a few things:

Ramkhamhaeng's ability is pretty good for both pursuing cultural victories and supporting specialist populations. Sure, dedicating your own resources would probably get you a greater amount of food/ culture, but that also means you won't be able to achieve your other goals. Also, you generally seem to have more cash in Civ5 for spending, and there are other ways to achieve influence with city states.

Elizabeth's UA is decent, as naval units are better (they can actually kill units and damage cities, for one thing), and units can embark now. No need for an archipelago map, just embarking a bunch of units and send them along the coast of wherever you're on will generally get them to your opponent's coastal cities sooner. It's not great, but it's solid.

Washington's is decent. The line of sight is very useful for early exploration and keeping a watch on opposing troops, and the tile discount can be key.

Suleiman has by far the worst UA around, by far.

Monty's is probably the second worst, which is a shame, as flavor-wise it really fits. They should really scale the culture bonus you get, IMO, as it's strictly worse than Napoleon's UA as is. 3 culture per kill in the medieval age is next to nothing. Harun's trade route bonus should scale upwards too, IMO.

 

[DaviddesJ]

First off, the game needs a crapload of balancing. Some civs are just significantly weaker than others, and I really hope this all gets fixed at some point (or that someone mods everything to be balanced).

Some of us don't want the civs to be balanced with each other.