Easy questions for the pros

[Augie]

I'm a newbie. Just finished my second game (took 3 long days) and won with Greece. I was going to go for Diplomatic, but ended up taking all the other Civs for Dom win and I was only in the Modern Era.

I came up with a few questions from this experience:
* Is there a way to see what units other Civs have? This would help me to better assess whether to go to war with them, or does it have to be a guessing game?
* I've got G&K and BNW. All the win formulas are pretty clear except for the Cultural win. I see the screen, but I can't decipher it, so I can't tell if I'm way ahead or way behind. Can anyone lead me to a thread or document that covers this topic AND explains the Cultural Overview screens?

Thanks!!!!!

 

[hadisami8]

Well, i'm by no means a pro but i'll try to answer your questions knowing what i know.

Apart from other civ's units being close to yours, you can make an open border agreement with the civ (you do this in the trading section when talking to another civ) so you can send a unit in their territory to see what units they have.

Every now and then a pop-up will appear, showing a table of what civ has 'the pointiest sticks' which basically means military might. This is useful for assessing how powerful your military is in comparison to others'.

Finally, in the top right there is a button with a scroll on it. Click it, and then press the button saying 'demographics'. This shows many statistics of your civ, such as population and your military size, and shows what rank you are in the game, who has the highest and who has the lowest. These things should give you some ideas as to whether you should attack or not.

As for the culture victory, i just worked it out myself. Basically, the bar of your tourism is the silver one, and their culture is the purple one below it. Your goal is to essentially make your tourism so high against a civ that your tourism will eventually add up and be more than the total culture produced by them. Your tourism is the attack, while their culture is the defence. You can increase your tourism by many ways, but most commonly by great works, which are produced by great artists,writers and musicians. Although your culture will start very low at first, only about 2 or 4, as you progress into the game, buildings such as hotels can increase this massively, as well as wonders and other stuff.

You can increase the tourism you give off to a certain civ even more so if you have an open border agreement with them, or if you have a trade route with them. Each of these will increase the tourism you give off to them by 25%, so if in total you make 10 tourism, but you have open borders and a trade route with a certain civ, you will be giving off 15 tourism to them.

I hope that makes sense, and i'm sure someone with more experience and knowledge will have more info to add, but that is a brief overview. Have fun!

 

[deity12]

A quick wee tip that helps, that I noticed hadisami8 hadn't mentioned. If you go into your advisors, (under the wee scroll next to the social policy button), you can scroll though your military advisor's advice and he will tell you thing like 'The Ottoman empire's army could wipe us off the planet!' or 'The Egyptian Empire's army is weaker than ours.' Hope this helps.

 

[Augie]

I'm printing this out! This is the best explanation I've seen so far...and I read the whole combined user manual and various postings. I seen that 'pointiest stick' display, but thought it was just a ambiguous message, but now I see the meaning. I never thought to look at the trade screen to see the units. The Culture angle is starting to make more sense. Thanks so much!!

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

This thread is about ideology pressure, but that has to do with culture and tourism, so you may find it useful
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=504903