Civ V help for a Civ IV Veteran

[Chazumi]

Played Civ III and IV for years, just got Civ V and figured a few things out. Kind of struggling to handle the basics here, anybody got some general tips of things I should do new/different in this one than the last one? Played a few short games already on prince difficulty, here's some things i've learned so far:

Roads suck, at least early, drained my economy first game.

Cities are kind of hard for me to conquer, not being able to stack military units and relearning how archers/catapults work I'm not sure how to utilize the military units now. Do archers still offer best city defense?

Terrain improvement: Usually I did: mines on hills, cottages on all green tiles/flood plains/river tiles, and improved all resources.

I'm noticing you can only have X number of units per resource.

Things of this nature are kind of throwing off my game, do any of you with Civ IV experience have any tips of things you had to relearn/do differently?

Thanks in advance.

 

[kell_the_kyuss]

hi.

adaption isnt bad. if it was the bsd boards I would say rtfm. it isnt and i wont.

roads only go where you need to go, connecting cities for trade routes. harbors also connect trade routes. if the city is more then 5 spaces, consider it not worth connecting money wise. smaller cities provide less revenue etc.

if you conquer an empire, you might wanna remove some of its roads.

you only need 1 actual land unit to take a city properly.

ring the city with catapults and archers for ranged attacks, couple infantry a couple turns later and the city is gone. i really enjoy not having stacks of doom. catapults and cannons are my favorite thing to stick in a city.


and you have to be very strategic about where you invade as to what you invade.
if a society has 6 cities and nothing you need, it isnt worth the time to invade them except to raze all of the cities.

civ 5 is not about conquering the entire world, its about being selective on where you go and what you do, and how you do it.

happiness is a , welcome to the revolution.

 

[TM Moot]

Roads suck, at least early, drained my economy first game.

Only build between your cities (most direct route). Don't prioritise roads either, get your farms/mines/plantations sorted first. The trade bonus is greater the higher the pop so it pays to take your time!

Do not hook up resources with roads. Sometimes a City State will ask for a road connection, post-patch this actually works now.

Any coastal cities can connect to the Capital as long as both cities have a Harbour built. If so, don't bother with a road/railroad.

 

[TM Moot]

Cities are kind of hard for me to conquer, not being able to stack military units and relearning how archers/catapults work I'm not sure how to utilize the military units now. Do archers still offer best city defense?

Post-patch cities are supposedly harder to conquer. If you have enough ranged attackers (seige > archers) then in theory you only need one non-ranged unit to capture it once it has been softened up.

Generally I try to have a balanced army (2 seige, 2 archers, 2 melee & 2 horse), which captures Cities fairly easily. Unlike in civ4, you now need to PLAN where your units need to move to in advance, rather then just plodding forward. Watch out for any quick moving defenders which may strike at any unprotected seige/ranged units.

Units can be garrisioned in a city, which adds to the city defense value, or, probably best, place a unit in the city and manually attack (range or melee) any weakened invaders.

 

[TM Moot]

Terrain improvement: Usually I did: mines on hills, cottages on all green tiles/flood plains/river tiles, and improved all resources.

I'm noticing you can only have X number of units per resource.

No cottages i'm afraid. Just horrible Trading Posts, which I normally don't build, partly on principle and partly because I like farms.

Sometimes farming riverside hills is useful. Post-patch farms and mines & resources get better later on after discovering new techs.

Strategic resources (as opposed to luxury resources) are quantifiable, with both units and some buildings using up a resource. However, if a swordsmen (1 iron) dies, then you do get the resource back.

 

[Michl2602]

No cottages i'm afraid. Just horrible Trading Posts, which I normally don't build, partly on principle and partly because I like farms.

Sometimes farming riverside hills is useful. Post-patch farms and mines & resources get better later on after discovering new techs.

Strategic resources (as opposed to luxury resources) are quantifiable, with both units and some buildings using up a resource. However, if a swordsmen (1 iron) dies, then you do get the resource back.

To OP: Don't believe what he says about trading posts. They are the core of your economy. Build plenty of them once your cities have enough food and production.

PS.: Production in CiV can't only come out of mines but also out of lumbermills on wood-tiles. Sorry enough there's no executive summary of the quality of 'CiV-guide' (in 'Strategy Articles', which is probably not updated to after patch conditions yet) desribing post-patch szenario. I would still suggest to give it a read.

 

[TM Moot]

To OP: Don't believe what he says about trading posts. They are the core of your economy. Build plenty of them once your cities have enough food and production.

Each to their own, differing play styles/strategies is one ov CIVs core features.

Genuinely, I don't build many, perhaps at the higher levels you need to, but i've won diplomatic (economic ) victories on Emperor without bothering with TP's.

I can see the point in building them around puppet cities. Better for them to build cash then to grow and add to your unhappiness I guess.

I know gameplay>realism, but the idea of a city surrounded by tents is rubbish, ESPECIALLY when the previous incarnation was the cottage .

 

[Michl2602]

Genuinely, I don't build many, perhaps at the higher levels you need to, but i've won diplomatic (economic ) victories on Emperor without bothering with TP's.

Hmm... I'm surprised to hear that. From where does your gold come from then, as the buildings also give much less, if you don't have an appropriate basic income?

according diplo: I'll probably never manage to reach one. Not because I can't generate a very good GPT, but because I always reinvest by building new cities and rush buying stuff in them. From where do you guys get the discipline to save those ~10k gold necessary for it, when there are always good possibilities to invest around?

 

[Chimera1804]

I don't see what the issue with TPs are...remember that science no longer is a percentage of your gold income, thus having lower gold yields for improvements makes perfect sense, as 100% of it goes to your income. And then in the rationalism tree you can get +1 per trading post. In total it's only one "unit" less than a full-fledged town. And now with the slight bit of growth added (+1 at economics) it's pretty good. However, graphics-wise the cottage completely dominates.


On topic: For cities, I find a good rule of thumb is two melee/gunpowder and one siege. Protect your siege unit from defenders with the melee while the siege reduces the city's defenses a bit, then storm it. Any other units you have can be used to make sure defenders don't get to your siege/ranged. And don't forget your zones of control...they can be very useful.

 

[TM Moot]

Hmm... I'm surprised to hear that. From where does your gold come from then, as the buildings also give much less, if you don't have an appropriate basic income?

i am quite particular where i settle my cities, maximising luxury resources (which normally have a decent base gold) and prioritising river locations or decent coastal spots

trading spare resources with the AI can generate plenty of cash

also constant exploration, taking out barb camps and meeting the CS's first all helps

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Your primary settling motivation is luxury resources, instead of food.

 

[humbe]

I don't see what the issue with TPs are...remember that science no longer is a percentage of your gold income, thus having lower gold yields for improvements makes perfect sense, as 100% of it goes to your income. And then in the rationalism tree you can get +1 per trading post. In total it's only one "unit" less than a full-fledged town. And now with the slight bit of growth added (+1 at economics) it's pretty good. However, graphics-wise the cottage completely dominates. .

Couldn't agree more.. Before you got commerce, which you had to divide amongst, science, gold, luxuries & spying. Now you get gold directly and the other parts are redesigned. To the better in my opinion. Makes a bit more sense, and less extreme tactics to take advantage of game mechanics.

 

[TM Moot]

Couldn't agree more.. Before you got commerce, which you had to divide amongst, science, gold, luxuries & spying. Now you get gold directly and the other parts are redesigned. To the better in my opinion. Makes a bit more sense, and less extreme tactics to take advantage of game mechanics.

Personally speaking, I am happy with the game mechanics and the removal of the old Sliders, but I do think the Trade Post is a poor substitute for the cottage.

Ok, they both get better when civics/SP's are adopted and techs researched (post-patch).

I liked the fact that the cottage required constant working for it to develop into a hamlet, village and eventually a town. It looked good, realistic and appropriate.

The Trade Post looks awful (at least on my graphics, looks like an outdoor laundrette!)and feels pretend. The Trade Post should be a one-per-city feature, possibly via a GM.

 

[eric_]

Great posts so far.

One cIV habit I've had trouble breaking is keeping all of my cities close to my capital to battle city maintenance. In ciV, there is no distance penalty to maintenance (see caveat below), so moving a little further to grab an extra resource or two is worthwhile. Under some circumstances, it's even worth settling a remote colony to grab a vital resource that you might lack in your core empire (e.g., iron).

The one caveat to the distance penalty is that road maintenance makes it increasingly costly to hook up a city the further it is from your capital (or the nearest city already connected to the capital). In such a case, just leave the city unconnected until it grows to size 3 or 4, at which point you'll get a nice income boost when you bring it online. Just be sure any unconnected city has a decent defensive force nearby until the road is connected, particularly if it's along an opponent's border or is a remote outpost.

 

[spathos]

I'll try not to repeat what everyone else said in the thread. The combat system is more like a wargame type strategy game then the stack of doom (with random PITA number generator). This is a big improvement once you understand how it works.

The good units for invasion type armies all cost resources (horses and iron). The best unit for capturing cities is the catapult and the strat with them is similar from previous civ games where you use melee units (like spearmen) to block them from attack while you reduce the cities hitpoints, then use 1-2 of the spearmen to take over the city. With this strat, you want to upgrade your melee to have cover 1 + 2 so they don't get hurt by the cities' bombardment.

Archers are good for city defense since they hit harder than the city's bombardment, but since hammers are scarcer, I don't bother with building them if I'm planning on doing invasion. Having a few horsemen is also very good early. You just keep them behind the spearmen as well and then bombard any units with your catas and run them down with the horsemen. Then retreat back behind the spears to safety.

A few other important things to realize: 1) Victory isn't wiping out an enemy civ, but rather just taking over all enemy starter capital cities. 2) Annex a city causes a major hit to both happiness and culture points (each annexed = 30% larger culture requirements), so the goal is to raze the crappy cities and puppet everything else until the war is over.

If you're playing an early war civ (like the Greeks), you don't need a billion units to keep control like earlier Civs, just 1-2 units to fight off any barbs and then one very good army to steamroll everything and leave a bunch of puppets. Unfortunately, the closer you get to an enemy capital, the more the other civs want you to stop fighting and make peace. They may even backstab you if you get close to taking out one of them, unless they're also involved in fighting that Civ. So diplomacy matters more in some ways.

 

[spathos]

One other micro-management type point: The city management AI is better, but there can be a big difference in the number of hammers you get from the "default" versus "production focused" options. Like 10+ turns in some cases. So if you are wanting to ramp up production, make sure your hammer cities are set to hammer, while if you want to tech up, make sure they're set to default or to food, as increased population = increased science now.

 

[Civsassin]

Also, another big difference from CiIV, is specialist management. CiV has good city management handling. Much less micromanagement is necessary. Set your city for one of the default specialties, and the governor does a pretty good job at optimizing it.

A big thing I learned early, especially on lower levels, Emperor and below, is the use of CSs. They can take your game to the next level. Use them, and work the Patronage branch to optimize them.

Happiness is manageable with expansion. Learn the policies, wonders, and buildings that add happiness, and plan around them if you decide to REX.

 

[skallben]

Having a strategy with early policies makes a big different with latest patch. National College is very important to get, seems predominant strategy is to rush it out before expanding but it's possible to get it later allthough it will cost more and likely you will need to buy a library. First cities should be settled to get many resources and preferrably around rivers because of the gold and civil service bonus to farms. Trading posts are poor until economics, personally I like to grow a good population base and start building trading posts in renaissance a bit before economics and keep it up until steampower hits and railroad construction is next.

 

[joncnunn]

Yes: First erase all memories of tactics that worked well in Civ IV; things are much different.

You don't need roads to connect resources. And your empire needs some population just to get the trade route to break even. (a route running from a pop 2 capital to a pop 1 city won't come close to paying for the route)

Best approach against cities in Civ 5 controlled by the AI is bombard it for a few turns until it's weak enough for your melee units to finish it off. You'll probably need to knock out the opposing units (those that venture away from cities)

In Civ 5, it's your cities job to protect 1 unit; NOT a unit's job to protect your city. Since archers have weak melee, a city is often a good place for them. (Plus if it happened to be stationed there; city bombard while the Archer was part of the garrison followed immediately by waking up the Archer and having it bombard that same unit again on the same turn.) I much prefer building Chariot Archers when I have horses though for the mobility edge.

In Civ 5, Hills on river are often best farmed; and hills not on river but with Jungle or Forest are often best off with an improvement that won't destroy the Jungle or Forest.
Improving resources are still good. Trade Posts are often best on Grassland & Flood Plains, while the regular plains are often best farmed. River tiles indeed have a higher priority.

Against the AI, a formation of 5 or 6 units is often unbeatable. They just have to be in the right formation and reasonably up to date.

Played Civ III and IV for years, just got Civ V and figured a few things out. Kind of struggling to handle the basics here, anybody got some general tips of things I should do new/different in this one than the last one? Played a few short games already on prince difficulty, here's some things i've learned so far:

Roads suck, at least early, drained my economy first game.

Cities are kind of hard for me to conquer, not being able to stack military units and relearning how archers/catapults work I'm not sure how to utilize the military units now. Do archers still offer best city defense?

Terrain improvement: Usually I did: mines on hills, cottages on all green tiles/flood plains/river tiles, and improved all resources.

I'm noticing you can only have X number of units per resource.

Things of this nature are kind of throwing off my game, do any of you with Civ IV experience have any tips of things you had to relearn/do differently?

Thanks in advance.

 

[slobberinbear]

Happiness is a huge factor if you are a conqueror or expander. I would say that anything you do to get happiness without paying an arm and a leg for it (i.e. lots of happy buildings early) is good. This means settling new luxuries is a priority, as is improving surplus luxuries for trade with AI civs that have surplussage of their own. This in turn makes Astronomy (or being Polynesian) huge, so you can meet all the AIs and trade with them for happiness.

The other factor I have noticed is that Gold is absolutely HUGE in Civ V. Once you have 500-600 gold, you can buy a settler ... or upgrade 5 warriors into swordsmen ... or rush-buy a courthouse in a recently-annexed city ...

Which again leads us back to luxury tiles, which are good gold tiles.