First problems after my first few civ games

[Prospero]

Hello. I’m completely new to the civilization series, but the latest version as got me hooked for sure. I’ve played a couple games, mucking about and starting over when things go wrong, and I’m getting the hang of it. I’m currently playing on warlord on a standard map, normal time. I have some questions, naturally

- War hardly seems a viable means for victory. It takes a very long time to conquer another civilization. I can usually take a city or two, and then it’s a standoff. Or should I use peacy treaties and do it in stages ? Also, how does war influence your score ? It seems to me every time I am at war my score is plummeting, even when I’m winning it.
- A cultural victory seems very hard to achieve too. In my current game I have 8 cities, three of which are highly productive ones. I have the industrious trait, so I built almost all the wonders, and my main cultural city is producing a little more then 100 culture per turn. That’s with hermitage and a couple artists and great person specialists. The year is already 1850, and even with my best cultural city I would still need 300 turns to reach 5000 culture. What am I doing wrong ? I’m giving all wonders and cultural buildings priority and I have a good production rate, so I build them pretty fast.
- As far as a score victory would go, it seems there’s always some civ that’s out of my reach that’s ahead in the score lead. Since a long-term war usually plummets my score and the other civ is out of reach, I don’t see a way to thwart them What are my options to halt another civ’s advance ? I’m simply thinking of switching my cities to tech and going for the space victory. I think I’m well ahead in the tech race, since the other civs won’t stop asking me for gifts and trying to cut me lousy tech trades . But then I don’t know if I’ll make it before 2050…

 

[Sir Toma]

Welcome Prospero to the wonderful world of civ

About war it is very difficult to get it right. Usually you can take 1 or 2 cities before you start to feel the side affects like unhappiness, loss of alot of gold, or dropping score. So my advice would be to charge in take a few cities, and then make peace. After you have got the cities you conquered out of resistance and gove them a defensive unit or two. I'm not a warmonger by nature but i've noticed that long wars destroy your economy.

If your trying to get a cultural victory the best way to do it is to spread out wonders and religions, and after you have got enough techs so that you feel comfortable against invasion, put science on 0% and the culture slider on 100%. If you do this you should be able to double or triple the amount of culture you are producing. Also using a culture bomb is usually better than making the great artists into specialists. 4000 culture goes a long way. Watch out for AI's going for the space race victory as they can often beat you if they're quick enough

If you have good relations with another civ try and get them to go to war with the score leader. As soon as they declare war the enemy will turn onto war mode and their scoreshould drop a little.

Hope this helps

_____________________
Must kill floating eyeballs

 

[Prospero]

Good tips, just like in my other *ahem* double post. Thanks, Toma, I'm going to give it another go tonight.

 

[zafyro]

Culture is not so hard to gain, and reaching 50k in a city is also not so dificult but you have specialice the city [so it probably wont produce a lot]. I have recently won by culture one of my last games and my cities were producing 400-500+ culture per turn in the end [and that´s not a limit].

Of course culture slider is important but to produce a great amount of culture in a city through this way it´s better to have lots of "coins" instead of hammers, so cottages are prefered, that could be one of yor problems.

Distributing culture wonders on the 3 cities needed to win by culture is important [i mean hollywood, broadway and rock and roll]

And just note that a single great artist in a city with good culture boosters can manage to create quite more than the 4k culture of the culture bomb [16culture per turn +100% (free speech) +100% (hermitage) +100% (radio tower + culture wonder) +50% (cathedral [or more if you construct other cathedrals) x 30(culture slider bonus or more if you set it higher) = 480% (76 or so culture points per turn makes 4k culture in 56 turns.

About war; it´s finely balanced, against a similar technology enemy you need a huge army and being prepared to suffer casualities [and a great amount of economical loss] wiping everybody out is still a posibility sure, but it´s harder as war effort drains your other resources and i end having obsolete armies before i manage to complete a conquest or domination victory [got no money or research to keep going building newer units or upgrading the old ones]

My only domination game has been up o the date with the roman legionaries wich are a very powerfull special unit and can dominate a game if used properly.

 

[Batvanio]

welcome prospero.

before I give you some advice I will also give you a warning.
I still have Civ I installed on my laptop.
Civ III is still installed on my desktop comp. I've played this game since it was
released many, many years ago and continue to do so.
Be careful not to adict too much Try to resist and fight the addiction.

Now to the point. The more you play the more new things about the game you will discover, new tricks, new strategies, many things that you dont know. Expetise will come with experience and lots of playing. The thing is - this is a very complex game - you can play hundreds of games and still miss a lot of knowledge about it. You'll discover the game bit by bit - sometimes it may take years to understand the game fully.

Imagine it is like an iceberg and you just scratched the top of it.