I can never seem to keep up...

[Dreadnought]

Hey guys,

I'm no Civ5 expert, but I'm not a noob either, and I've run into a lot of problems playing relaxed games with my friends.

I can never keep up in science or population. I always seem to get stuck in the 7-12 range while other players get into the 20s. My science, therefore, suffers as well, and I am several technologies behind by the endgame.

Anyone have any advice for maintaining a nice population growth? The saddest part of my predicament is that I've fallen behind in population even after building the Hanging Gardens. Is there any Civ/strategy you'd suggest? I normally play as America.

Thanks in advance.

 

[MaximusK]

You can try to stang the Temple of Artemis. You can also buy some Maritime city-states which will support you with additional food. Also, watch your happiness make sure you keep it positive.

 

[sparkyal]

RA's...sign lots of RA's.........

 

[Shurdus]

The above. Also, try to get a few scientist specialists. You will eventually pop great scientists, and if you keep them safe until later in the game, you can really catch up when bulbing several techs in the late game. You should be ok by then.

Just out of curiosity, but on what difficulty do you play? If you fall behind on king or so, then I suggest you may need to look into your overall city specialisation as well as your overall strategy.


Anyway, it is very difficult to answer a general queston like this. What makes it way easier is if you could be a bit more specific. The more precise your questions, the btter we may try to answer them. In general I suggest you read up on startegy articles in the war academy, and that you read a lot of topics on these forums. Search for the topics you are inerested in. If you need to have more specific answers still, then ask away.

 

[Vorlath]

Build your cities within range of horses or elephants. That way, you can build circus for happiness. So Animal Husbandry is important. Try and get at least one wonder for happiness. I like the Eiffel Tower myself though that's later on. But there are others just as good. Be conscious of what policies you take that help happiness. If you go for science, then the two best policies for what you're looking for are civil society and democracy if you use specialists. They only come at Renaissance though.

At the start, for growth, the two techs that will affect growth a lot are Civil Service (extra ) along rivers and later, Fertilizer for extra everywhere else.

Then you should probably build happiness buildings like the Colosseum.

BTW, one thing I used to do VERY wrongly is to just go for high growth/population for no reason. There is no point in having an extra citizen if you don't get anything from it. Most of the games I had a hard time with, this was the main cause of my troubles. I now only get a new citizen when it gave me an advantage for that happiness point.

I'll give you an example of when getting a new citizen is bad. If you get a new citizen and you're with one happiness less, but your production and food and pretty much everything else is the same, then you're in trouble. Sorry, the extra science isn't gonna be of much use if your city is stonewalling your entire civilization.

Until Civil Service, I'm looking for places to settle and getting monuments and building up an army.

Oh... forgot probably the most important point. Are you playing with any AI's? If so, and even if not, you gotta trade luxuries. You can't do it without luxuries. Sell all extra luxuries to the AI and trade whatever luxuries one for one you can, even buying them if necessary. Only if you need more happiness, but sell everything you don't need @ 240 or whatever you can get. At the beginning, sell open borders to AI's for 50 gold.

edit:

Saw you mentioned 7-12 range for high pop. This is later. So I'll assume you have Civil Service and Fertilizer. Civil society and Democracy policy are your friend. But for city growth, Aqueduct and Hospital are what you want. A Hospital gives 5 extra food, but no longer retains food. I think the Hospital is far better as it frees up 2.5 citizens, or 5 specialist if you have Civil Society. I've had cities with 30+ pop doing this, though I do get the buildings and improvements for specific tiles like grain tiles. Those will provide insane amounts of food. You also need to be able to select what tiles are worked by what citizens.

 

[Tabarnak]

Trade lux for lux with friendly neighbors since you play with humans. Beeline Education and try to get Chichen Itza or Notre-Dame. Settle near rivers.

It's better to run 10-12 cities with 2 scientists than 16-17 cities with no specialists. Stay in the middle, don't burn your happiness too fast. This let you the time to build other things than happiness buildings. Delaying them at least.

I will post a youtube game with humans(FFA) in a couple of hours. I will edit this post when it will be online. Playing with Americans too

You should get useful infos with this game.

Edit :


Link to video.

 

[Tabarnak]

Updated last post.

 

[kaltorak]

I can never keep up in science or population. I always seem to get stuck in the 7-12 range while other players get into the 20s.

Maybe you are beeing too slow with the tile upgrades? You need a worker fast, and more when you expand.

I also never build tradeposts. I farm and mine everything and still have lots of gold mid/late game.

 

[AGorillaKiller]

Staying Happy is the first thing you need to address. With all the food in the world your citys will take forever to grow if your not happy. Try to build happy buildings before you go negative. The city info tells you how many turns befor they will grow, check all of you citys do some maths and build what you need to stay happy (before it runs out).
Once you run out of happy buildings use SPs which create happynes and beeline just for them eg. Organised Religion, military cast, Meritocricy when you have trade routes hooked upand Cultural Dipolmacy. Try using them and only them.
Get as many luxurys as you can, buy up all city states with extra luxurys once you have all this under control the grow will follow.
Boost growth with city sates and always balance growth with production so they keep growing.
When unhappy switch all citys to production.
Once you have universitys build as many as you can put 2 scientists in them and never take them out

 

[Hvuchew]

As it seems it depends on the resources around you. If you have fish or wheat growth is easy.

Investing in Tradition is also a very good (a lot of the bonuses there are "must" if you ask me)

Investing time in focusing on growth (food distribution focus in the city mini map) - instead of production will be good.

No other tricks from me

 

[qec]

Don't settle cities the minimum distance away from each other. This limits growth in cities because they are sharing tiles and can work fewer tiles as a result. This can significantly cut down on pop. growth unless you are in a very fertile part of the map, like lots of grassland and wheat or cows etc.

 

[NotSure]

I'm guessing your friends are building aqueducts? The granary is a good early building (and the water mill to a lesser extent) but the aqueduct keeps city populations growing where they normally start to stall.

 

[Pook]

Science: yes, this is formulaic, but it works. Start the game by researching pottery and writing, then immediately build the Great Library. Use the free tech from GL to obtain Philosophy, then immediately build the National College. Be sure you finish the NC before founding your second city. Result will be over 20 science beakers every turn, early in the game.

 

[Tabarnak]

Science: yes, this is formulaic, but it works. Start the game by researching pottery and writing, then immediately build the Great Library. Use the free tech from GL to obtain Philosophy, then immediately build the National College. Be sure you finish the NC before founding your second city. Result will be over 20 science beakers every turn, early in the game.

It's always a nice start, but against humans the GL is also always a gambit, unless you get a terrific land. In my video, a player built it in 23 turns at quick speed, which is pretty fast. I would have definitively missed that. A 2 to 4 cities start before NC is a bit behind after 0AD in term of total beakers if you can grow your cities large enough, but not that catastrophic. And you get more gold and production.

But it's viable. I made this 1 city NC strat before expansion and it's great if you can manage to build Oracle as well. The main problem is lack of self defence in the beginning. Just watch your neighbors more attentively. But the GL start followed by NC is the fastest route to Education and Renaissance(at least against humans).