First game ever

[CivTyler]

Just got CiV and it is my first civilization game I have ever played.

I installed both Vanilla, and G&K

I notice a 'Play Now' option which I assume would have just tossed me into a totally random game, so I obviously picked the more tempting and definitely more interesting 'Set Up Game'.

I did a standard map (think it was eight actual civilizations, and I adjusted the City State amount to 24) on standard speed

I did the earth type of map and set the age of the world to 5 billion (which I assume would result in a flatter planet)

For my first CiV game I figured I would start myself with the hard level CiV has labelled as 'King' (another assumption I decided to make, I'm hoping that I will be able to handle this setting based on my simulation game experience)

This may have been a mistake but I decided to roll a random civilization to play, along with civilizations in play and ended up getting Gandhi of India with a unique ability of double unhappiness per city, half unhappiness per citizen.
They also have an elephant unit and an icon I'd assume meaning a special building, I could not see any description of the two so I will be finding out later on.

Before hitting Start Game I reviewed my selected settings. I had collected everything I learned, from looking at the individual leaders briefly (this was the primary reason I did a random civilization - there is just way to many cool leaders from history to pick from) and all the settings I had the ability to adjust to my liking before beginning a match and thought to myself how stellar CiV gameplay must be.


I hit Start Game and am hit with a loading screen displaying my rolled civilization. A few moments pass and the loading art fades and I am dropped into the CiV game.


I typed this up yesterday and then I couldn't beat the written or verbal captcha so I gave up and went to bed. Woke up this morning, gave it one more shot and succeeded.

At this point I have started my game and I have to be honest, it feels a little slow. The root cause of this though, I am beginning to believe, is because of all these extra city states I added. A quick example of my reasoning on this: Turn Zero, I am given a Settler and a Warrior, and off to the SSW just on the edge of the fog I see another Settler labelled: 'Warsaw Settler'.

Now I do have screenshots of my game thus far that I will eventually post onto this thread, taken every few turns, and when something significant happens - considering I remembered to take one. When i post these screenshots constructive criticism is appreciated, as it is any time.

I have noticed however that these screenies are .tga extensions and I don't know how to convert it or even view them on a Windows computer. My solution is tedious and involves emailing 5 at a time to my self (currently at 50ish screenies) and then downloading them onto my mac and then converting it to an appropriate format. I'd bet there was an easier way but I am not the most tech savvy fellow.



A quick summary of my game so far, and my thoughts on the gameplay overall.

Slow, but I know this is because I over filled the map with City States. The next game I play theres a good chance I will give level six difficulty a go and optimize the map with fewer city states, and maybe attempt a large sized map.

In addition to that Settler being on the screen when I initially started, about mid-game an Arabian Settler and his warrior guard posted out in a city state for roughly 100 turns making no movement. I'm guessing there is a minimum distance between any city to found a new one?

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I have found that Unique Units are pretty hard core if you are in the same era
as the AI. My elephants helped me plant one city far from my capital and allowed me to claim the one hex tile that connected Africa to Europe from the Ottomans which ultimately gave me the ability to go either along Europe's coast or the Middle East coast without going all the way around Africa.

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I really like how you need to focus on multiple aspects of your empire such as happiness and culture. In my first game I figured I would shoot for optimum science production on the basis of Missiles/tanks will always beat cannons/riflemen.

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I really like the religion mechanics of this game also, as far as beliefs, and the art of spreading your religion.

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Overall I feel like this game is well thought out and far superior than many other simulation games. Next game I play I know not to over crowd the map

Moderator Action: Not much strategy in here -> moved to "General Discussion".

 

[Slowpoked]

Standard is 8 civs and 16 city-states, so you added 8 more cities to the map. That isn't too bad, but it could mess up the balance a bit. It certainly favors civs like Greece and Austria who get city-state bonuses or civs who favor Tall strategies like India. It sounds like you rolled a map without much land though, which explains why you started so close to other players.

Personally I think the default 8-16 is too much. I lower it to 9-12 usually because I don't like city-states crowding the map.

 

[drac313]

Reduce the amount of city states...really opens up the map and helps load times A LOT!

 

[Arakos4242]

try ending your turn in strategic mode. this is a small button near the minimap with hexes on it. it is a non 3d view of the game that can be toggled on or off. this will speed the game immensely, wether you play in it, or just end your turns in it.

 

[kirbdog]

If you have played strategy games before, I will affirm that starting on King is fine.

However, I find that starting on 6 *and* playing a large map will land you in dangerous territory, if you are new to the franchise. I'd suggest bumping it down to a Standard size map because larger maps generally take longer to play (some scaling involved that assumes you found more cities to compensate) and are a little harder (more competition, more potential for runaway AI). And while difficulty level 5 is a safer pond to experiment in, that is your call.

 

[CivTyler]

Due to my first game ever being over crowded I just abandoned that game and started a new one on emperor which is currently incomplete. I followed kirbdog's advise about avoiding a large map for my first level 6 match.

I managed to get the celts for my random roll, I founded a pantheon on turn five. I am currently on turn 225, around the 1800s and have the #1 religion and am number two in technologies discovered ( I have found research agreements this game and have fallen in love ).

Now on in the early to mid turns in the 100s I was declared war on by Askia and Pacal and the armies they sent were so stupid huge I was on the verge of losing two cities very early but oddly enough managed to get a peace treaty from both of them for less than 100 gold (obviously I killed an outragous amount of units they sent before I got that) when I was willing to give substantially more for them to not take my cities.

I have to say from the first game I played on king, I never once seen AI armies this large. I had a spy in montezuma's capital and there is just stupid amounts of units.

Two more times Askia came after me throughout this game before he eventually got overthrown by Russia and Egypt, he was the first to lose his capital.

One more time Pacal came after me but eight turns before he declared war Montezuma and I made a pact to declare war in ten turns. I had pikeman just surrounding my city that was most likely to be seiged and defended for those two turns and then launched an offensive with Montezuma by my side, I got to take Tikal from PAcal and Montezuma got Uxma or some thign like that and we left him with just his capital.

About fifty turns after that some one proposed a research agreement to me for 300 gold which is when I found the holy grail of everything!

I then realized that instead of denying everyone an Embassy that I should accept them headstrong and go for a declaration of friendship and then research agreement. In one turn I initiated, 5 research agreements (all of which I had to fund 50% of the cost for the other civ but if you do gold for GPT you lose almost nothing if not gain a small percent)


Currently my total score ranking is 4/7 (Askia is eliminated)

Scary thing here is, even though she is an Ally, is that Russia is sitting in first place at 1250 total score and I am in fourth place with 650. From what I can see, she just has a crap load of small cities scattered all over.

My questions with this here is if I don't begin an assault on her empire will this kick me in the butt soon?

It is turn 225 and I would like to post some screenshots here, any tips on how to do that would be appreciated.

I have Windows 7(Chrome), Windows 8(Chrome), Mac OS 10.8.2(Safari)

 

[kirbdog]

She is the runaway. While you could ignore her and hope you win first, kicking her to the curb, preferrably when you gain a key tech like Flight, will ensure your victory, no matter what kind you are pursuing. (That being said, you could still probably win space or diplomacy just by ignoring her, at this level, if your cities are well-developed.)

 

[CivTyler]

What constitutes a well-developed city?

 

[Smokeybear]

What constitutes a well-developed city?

Well, that can vary a lot, depending on whether it's your capital city or another, whether you've built up a given city for a specific purpose (gold, food, science, military production, wonders, great people, all-purpose, etc), what kind of resources the city has available on the ground it occupies, and a lot of other intangible factors that vary with every game. Gotta love the potential complexity of this game.

But generally, what I'd call a well-developed city, is one that contains enough population and the appropriate buildings and improvements to be able to efficiently fulfill their purpose (usually one of those listed above) in order to help attain your victory condition first. You know when a city of yours is still struggling to grow and be able to utilize the tile resources it has, and you also know when it has reached the point where it feels strong and little is being wasted and it has the facilities and population to really pour out the gold/units/wonders/science/etc. that you expect out of it. That's what I consider a well-developed city.

 

[kirbdog]

You'll need 100+ bpt with public schools or 200+ bpt with research labs, 4-8 of them, and getting the appropriate population levels and science buildings fast enough to leap ahead in tech for your Victory Condition before anyone else can launch their own spaceship.

You can wait to decide later, like when she builds Apollo Program, if she gets that far, if you want.

(Of course, logically, you could do the same thing with 20+ cities all with 50 research, if you're going very wide...)

 

[scheva007]

If you have played strategy games before, I will affirm that starting on King is fine.

Lol, let him just start on warlord for a first try, ok?

 

[NordicExpanse]

I max my games out 100% and then some! Huge Pangea map, marathon game, max civs (which I think is 22(?)) and max city states (40(?)). yeah, it takes awhile to load and for AI to play its 61 civs, but gives me time to check e-mail, cook dinner, pay bills, etc while I play

 

[Smokeybear]

I max my games out 100% and then some! Huge Pangea map, marathon game, max civs (which I think is 22(?)) and max city states (40(?)). yeah, it takes awhile to load and for AI to play its 61 civs, but gives me time to check e-mail, cook dinner, pay bills, etc while I play

At 6 turns per session, it must take a while to finish one...