Creating a new strategy guide for beginners/intermediates

[TheGuineaPig]

I play in the No Quitters multiplayer group, and part of the problem with maintaining it is player attrition. Players move on, or give up, or get banned, and an influx of newer players is needed to replace them. This means people who have a strong enough grasp of the base game to make that jump into multiplayer (modded) Civ V.

But the issue is a lot of the strategy advice is bad. Not so much around here, which has some of the strongest singleplayer experts. But on Reddit or Steam or elsewhere if you look at what passes for strategy "guides" it's outdated at best, and actively harmful at worst. Obviously it's a 11 year old game and that comes with the territory. But people are still picking it up and not getting good advice. I want to create another set of strategy guides/videos to help beginner/intermediate players improve, and graduate to Immortal/Deity (and hopefully eventually to multiplayer).

I thought I should ask some of the members here what conventional Civ V wisdom is bad, or misleading, or outdated. There are certain obvious things like wonders not being very strong, or Liberty is actually very good, etc., but what key advice is missing that struggling players really need? I think I've got a fairly good handle on things going back and playing through vanilla Civ V games but I don't want to miss important stuff.

 

[mbbcam]

I've been playing Civ5 for years, and I'm not sure I have any idea what the conventional wisdom is. And I would suspect that conventional wisdom might be quite different from one player to another. Added to that, although I've never played multiplayer, I get the impression from what other people have said and written that it is so very different from single player that completely different strategies have to be adopted. In other words, conventional wisdom might actually be very good for single player, but no good for multi.

Are Filthy Robot's guides outdated? From what I have seen of them they seem to be pretty good, but as I don't play multi I'm not really in a position to judge.

Liberty might not be much good for multi, but on single it seems to work pretty well, under the right circumstances. I certainly like it more than Tradition, which I can never get to work well. And who said wonders are not very strong?

However, I think it is likely that your biggest problem here is that almost nobody who frequents this section nowadays plays multi. Over the years it has tended to be dominated by those who play single, and I don't think that has changed.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

Perhaps I was unclear. I mean for this to be a singleplayer guide. Newer or weaker players need to get better at singleplayer and be comfortable with sim city play before they make the jump to multiplayer (if they ever do).

I've already created a bunch of stuff for players transitioning to lekmod multiplayer. The idea is to go further upriver, so to speak, and try to improve the stock of vanilla Civ V players.

 

[vadalaz]

What key advice is missing that struggling players really need?

Three things that come to mind:

1) build orders - planning ahead, what to prioritize and why, which cities should only build the essentials and which ones can afford to build caravans, workers etc
2) micromanaging - how to make the most out of the land you have, what tiles to improve first, when to prioritize growth over hammers or vice versa, when to start spamming trading posts
3) combat tactics - how to make progress quickly and not lose units

It's tricky to write a guide on combat tactics, I think videos or pictures are better for this. I was thinking about starting a thread where people could post in-game situations and others would come up with solutions, e.g. how to take a particular city in the least # of turns with the least casualties.

 

[venice]

@vadalaz I (and likely many others) would find your suggestion for #3 quite useful, as I often have trouble conducting offensive wars on Diety, despite the fact that I can pretty consistently win a science or Diplo win, so long as I defend early, but I have trouble with anything else.

I definitely agree with @vadalaz that build orders, combat orders, and micromanaging are important, but I'd also include tech orders in this list, for example, whether to go university tech or workshop tech first.

 

[so_what]

I would think that there are 2 aspects, one is the strategy and the other is the execution.

For strategy, the main gap is that many people are too used to the good old strategy of 4 city Tradition. While that is a good starting point for new players to advance to emperor/immortal, it is not good enough for having a strong play on deity. For science oriented victory types - a wider strategy is arguably better. Deity strategy should be something that you finalize within the first 20 turns of the game and it varies base on victory condition, civ, map, and neighbours. Strategy should cover the following - Tall VS Wide, aggressive VS peaceful, social policy choices, general technology direction, and usage of great people.

Execution would vary from game to game. It is about the actual management of happiness, neighbours, religion, building order, wonders, civilian units, and military units. It is about how you realize your strategy or evolve the strategy if things don't go according to plan.

Strategy can discussed in the forum with screenshots. Many of us do summaries of our gameplays. For execution however, there are much too details and they are best covered with video guides.

 

[Nizef]

I would add a comment or two about city placement. I mean, you need (regardless of policies) some 5-6 tiles that generate enough food and you need a few hills for production. It should also be in the context of when to forward settle the AI and when not to do so. Knowing on which side of the river to settle might also be of importance etc.

Some of the new generation of streamers, like PC_J_Law and RoughMercies have updated tricks and tips and I find most of them both accurate and well founded.

 

[mbbcam]

I don't think I've ever seen a guide on diplomacy -- basically relations with AI civs and City States. There is Tiberiu's guide, though that is a bit unusual. Anyway, it is useful to know about bribing other players, what to sell, how to sell it (and how much to ask) plus getting loans from friends. I don't think any of that is well covered in guides. Nor are quests, alliances and friendships with City States.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

Dealing with diplomacy is a good one. There are intricacies to that that are pretty important for deity.

Some of the new generation of streamers, like PC_J_Law and RoughMercies have updated tricks and tips and I find most of them both accurate and well founded.

I tried googling for a strategy guide from them, and I couldn't find one. Do you have any links?

 

[Nizef]

Dealing with diplomacy is a good one. There are intricacies to that that are pretty important for deity.



I tried googling for a strategy guide from them, and I couldn't find one. Do you have any links?

No guides as I know, but they discuss a lot of useful things during their streams.

EDIT: PC_J_Law has several guides on Youtube and they are very informative and accurate. I can definitely recommend them.

 

[mbbcam]

Dealing with diplomacy is a good one. There are intricacies to that that are pretty important for deity.



I tried googling for a strategy guide from them, and I couldn't find one. Do you have any links?

They have YouTube channels which include video guides:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH1neWtKnVwNaI8HRJpxUNQ
https://www.youtube.com/c/PCJLaw

 

[beetle]

I was thinking about starting a thread where people could post in-game situations and others would come up with solutions, e.g. how to take a particular city in the least # of turns with the least casualties.

I think this would be very interesting.

I am not sure that, say 7 v 8 turns, is very compelling. But I think you can take a city in 5 turns that might take me 10+ turns. That sort of thing.

 

[mbbcam]

I think this would be very interesting.

I am not sure that, say 7 v 8 turns, is very compelling. But I think you can take a city in 5 turns that might take me 10+ turns. That sort of thing.

I would be delighted to see something about capturing cities. Never mind five turns -- anything less than about fifty would be interesting to me.

 

[beetle]

As it happens, @vadalaz and I are right now playing a succession game that lends itself to a discussion of how to take a particular city in the least number of turns with the fewest casualties.

Save is Deity Sweden, T198. Last turn Vijayanagara fell. Expect many Indian units in the fog.

Please report back how long it takes you to capture Delhi, and your losses. I wouldn’t expect the number of opponent kills to vary much player-to-player, but I now I regret not keeping track of that. Please also report anything of particular note. For example, I caught a 4-charge GPr on T200.

This particular setup is about as straightforward as it gets. In the screenshot, near Vijayanagara, there are 4x well-promoted XB, 3x Caroleans, a Knight, a Calvary, a Cannon (Dynamite soon), and a Hakkapeliitta. At the top of the screen shot you can see Sigtuna and one more Carolean, but there are three others there. The only other units worth mentioning I think are another Knight UU and a Hakkapeliitta. Several more XB are stationed in cities, but they are too fragile at this point in the game. Feel free to borrow from Sejong or Nebuchadnezzar, to upgrade the two Knights sooner than later.

I didn’t take Delhi until T211, so 14 turns. I lost two Caroleans, but no other units. I feel like my run was just okay, but maybe it is better to kick off the conversation with a mediocre benchmark? One signifiant mistake I made was researching Steam Power before Dynamite.

Spoiler screenshot :

 

[vadalaz]

Thanks @beetle for providing a save to kick things off! Let's not hijack this thread and continue this conversation in a new one.

 

[beetle]

No guides as I know, but they discuss a lot of useful things during their streams.

I hate to say it, but I have yet to find a Civ5 stream that I found watchable. They are too slow, the audio is not great, and they all seem to play with Quick Combat and Quick Movement. I am an experienced player, and I cannot really follow what is going on without pausing (which only slows things down more). I have no idea how people new to the game are supposed to find the streams instructive.

I have learned so much from this forum. I would rather read a guide.

My son, OTOH, would rather watch the popular streamers (e.g. Markiplier) than play the games himself. It is a brave new world.

 

[TheGuineaPig]

I hate to say it, but I have yet to find a Civ5 stream that I found watchable. They are too slow, the audio is not great, and they all seem to play with Quick Combat and Quick Movement. I am an experienced player, and I cannot really follow what is going on without pausing (which only slows things down more). I have no idea how people new to the game are supposed to find the streams instructive.

I have learned so much from this forum. I would rather read a guide.

Presumably that would be doubly true for lekmod multiplayer, which tends to play with fairly short turn timers as well.

In my experience the best way to pass on knowledge is to provide a theoretical framework that a player can apply to their own experiences, rather than urging they mimic an experienced player

 

[Diktaattori]

You can try to find ZeroAckens singleplayer videos