Early settling question

[Uzael36]

I've just got into playing Civ 5 again, after playing a little last year. I've kind of gotten addicted. So anyways, I've played a few games starting at warlord and just beat Emperor last (Sci/domination victory, both came up within 1 turn, so I saved and saw both victories).

The question I have is early on. Every game I've played, I have found that I can hang with the AI until I hit my 4 settlement. Once I hit 4 settlements (3 earlier, before I got better) I find myself in the lead most the time, or very close. However, almost immediately after making my 4th settlement, I find myself struggling with happiness even though I'm making sure I can construct circuses and coliseums as soon as possible. Gold would likely be an issue with a 5th city, but I've managed ok on gold the last few goes at it, after realizing that constructing a road is best left until after your 3rd settlement is constructed and gold starts to flow a bit more.

The last couple victories on King and Emperor, I did manage to get the gold under control, but still struggle a bit with happiness. While I slow down and start building on my 4 settlements, I'll see the AI with 7-8 settlements with 35 happiness, even on Prince, when I thought we were supposed to be even. Soon after, their scores sky rocket as mine plummets. I over come this by launching an attack on them and by the time I take some of their settlements, I have the resources to handle more.

The question is, am I just not properly managing my settlements early on, causing me to fall behind, or is this a normal issue?

I'd like to see if I can handle immortal or deity, but I feel like I may be missing something about proper early settlement management.

 

[NotSure]

The question is, am I just not properly managing my settlements early on, causing me to fall behind, or is this a normal issue?

I'd like to see if I can handle immortal or deity, but I feel like I may be missing something about proper early settlement management.

No, not necessarily. You might want to be careful about how large your cities grow until you can get markets, coliseums, etc. If you let your capital eat up all of your happiness your subsequent cities won't be worth squat until you get that happiness back.

If you want to move up, watch the deity LPs and check out the strategies & tips section. There are good strategies there for cavalry rushes, and sword rushes among many others. Those two strategies cover the first 50-100 turns though and are probably what you're looking for.

 

[Johan de Witt]

You should always keep in mind that playing on higher difficulties means your enemies will out-run you in score faster. You won't out-grow a deity enemy without effective warfare, so don't be discouraged if you lose the settle game.

Just be sure that you make up for it.

 

[joncnunn]

Just ignore the "score" while the game is in progress.

Unless you have conquered at least one of the major AIs and are planning a domination victory, it has no bearing on who's actually in the lead.

You can easily win either a science or diplomatic victory with only four or five cities.
You can also easily win a cultural victory with only one city.

 

[chazzycat]

When expanding past a few cities, you really have to focus on happiness. The AI gets massive cheats on happiness (on every level) so it's a challenge to match them in pure growth/expansion. IMO if you want to try the wide playstyle, it's pretty important that most of your cities have a new luxury. That is generally enough to allow enough early growth so the cities are profitable. The other two important early happiness points are 1- organized religion and 2- Notre Dame. Circuses are great, coliseums to a lesser extent but still important.

 

[Brigg]

Happiness you control with your social policies. Some of them are more effective that the others, but most of them are deep in the policy. The happiness crunch really starts to hit hard at higher levels. You can't add a new city unless you can pay the price.

 

[Shurdus]

Welcome to civfanatics, Uzael36!

 

[Uzael36]

Thanks for the responses.

What you said was mostly what I have learned over the past couple weeks.

It's been a lot of fun figuring out these general rules of growth. I remember it took me a few Prince games to come to realize several key strategies I did not know:
What!? roads cost maintenance?
Oh! I need to have culture for all victories, just like science (well, not as much as science in most cases).

 

[Helmling]

Thanks for the responses.

What you said was mostly what I have learned over the past couple weeks.

It's been a lot of fun figuring out these general rules of growth. I remember it took me a few Prince games to come to realize several key strategies I did not know:
What!? roads cost maintenance?
Oh! I need to have culture for all victories, just like science (well, not as much as science in most cases).

Yeah, culture is very important. A few early policies can really help with happiness, so stopping at 3 or 4 cities (I only go for a 4th if there's a peach site I just can't resist; otherwise I capitalize on the free culture buildings in the Tradition SP branch to load all my cities with Temples). A core of 4 cities is enough to start conquering and puppeting aggressive neighbors--and on Emperor, they will pester you so you can easily expand with honor.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Just ignore the "score" while the game is in progress.

Unless you have conquered at least one of the major AIs and are planning a domination victory, it has no bearing on who's actually in the lead.

You can easily win either a science or diplomatic victory with only four or five cities.
You can also easily win a cultural victory with only one city.

i have a question in specifics regarding that. by 'only' having 4 or 5 cities, does that mean only settling those and holding and defending? or does that mean settling 4 or 5 and taking a few puppets along the way? or does that mean settle 2 or 3 and and take some puppets to later annex and hold.

im currently stuck in immortal trying for science with Babylon and having a difficult time getting out of the Industrial Era. I've tried early military with Bowman rushes and Walls for defense and ive tried just 4 settled cities and defend. and neither has worked out yet.

 

[chazzycat]

im currently stuck in immortal trying for science with Babylon and having a difficult time getting out of the Industrial Era. I've tried early military with Bowman rushes and Walls for defense and ive tried just 4 settled cities and defend. and neither has worked out yet.

my advice would be focus more on great scientists. With Babylon you can get a ton of them and fly through the industrial/modern eras. Fight once early with Bowmen if you need some lebensraum...then you shouldn't need to fight any more, just build a few universities.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

my advice would be focus more on great scientists. With Babylon you can get a ton of them and fly through the industrial/modern eras. Fight once early with Bowmen if you need some lebensraum...then you shouldn't need to fight any more, just build a few universities.

sry, the reason i wasnt getting out of the industrial era was from civs attacking me. stuff like double and triple DoW's and getting conquered. i was doing okay in tech progression. i'd already had a few scientists popped to speed things up and decent specialist management to make use of the Babylon bonus. I was just taking the tech lead on my continent by late renaissance, but not overall for the whole map.

 

[chazzycat]

ah ok. In that case I would recommend using that tech to get artillery sooner rather than later. Artillery can usually save you even from several aggressive AI, it's a real game-changing unit IMO.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

for certain, im not making the most efficient use of RAs. yesterday i just started using a sheet of paper to write down what turn i sign the RA so i can watch to switch to the best one when it completes. im hoping some of these notes can help remind me when to shift gears or micromanage better.

 

[chazzycat]

yeah RAs are definitely important unless you have a nice large empire. It's all about the order...shifting gears right before it completes is actually not going to boost the value, it's just going to focus the output. Ideally you want to have a plan to maximize the value of each RA by maxing the median value. For instance, bulbing electricity is usually a good move because it opens up 3 really expensive techs, drastically boosting the median value. I would definitely recommend checking out the war academy science article, there's a lot of info there.

Goes without saying, but if you choose to use RAs, make sure you are either taking rationalism, building the PT, or both. 50% RAs are not worth it IMO, but 75% RAs are, and 100% RAs are super-powerful (OP even).

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

ive read the war academy article. it gave me the tip on how to select right before it finishes to rapidly get the lesser teched ones to catch up, like if you are in the Renaissance but didnt any of sailing and on, switch to sailing to quickly pop that, optics, and some of if not all of Astronomy. that kind of thing.

i did it once and it was pretty neat to see 2 plus some of a 3rd tech getting finished. i used to just think it might be random when it finishes the tech you are on and then chooses where the remainder goes. this was only when you finish a tech that you cant further the next one because you dont have all of the prereqs and there are more than one you need.

 

[chazzycat]

Yep. Guiding the overflow is certainly an important piece of the puzzle. But I think you might be missing another important point there. Getting two and a half techs is not that great if they are crappy cheap techs. You really want to get through expensive, important techs like civil service and education. To do that, you need to plan to maximize the median values. It's a bit more advanced, but certainly pays dividends when you fully understand how it works.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i got the median values explanation. it's kind of irritating to manage and plan for though. RAing the cheap ones is useful early on because eventually all of those have to be completed to get to modern era. and based on which side you chose to leave behind it's nice to suddenly be able to upgrade some legacy units (im looking at you longswordsman, haha).
l

 

[joncnunn]

The micromanagement is a whole lot less involved than the old way of partially research every tech you don't want to be granted past the threshold.

 

[gozpel]

So you sign a RA on turn 65, the agreement wont happen ON 95, but the turn after.

So sort out your techs on turn 95, you want a bigger tech then right?