I must admit

[NintendoTogepi]

I've logged 40 hours in this game but I just realized I have no idea how to play it.

How can I build a spaceship easily? I tried to go for a space race victory and just barely got it launched on time. Unfortunately ,it EXPLODED. (after that I had 10 turns left and won a score victory by one point, I nuked all of my allies )

But I don't understand what any of this means.

What is a "Specialist Economy"?

What is "Cottage Spam"?

What's the point of having so much gold? I had like 4000 gold during my space race victory attempt yet I couldn't really do anything with it.

How can I speed up research?

I'm just so confused....but I do think it's funny I'm addicted to the game without even understanding how the games play.

 

[Ultimate_Waffle]

I've logged 40 hours in this game but I just realized I have no idea how to play it.

How can I build a spaceship easily? I tried to go for a space race victory and just barely got it launched on time. Unfortunately ,it EXPLODED. (after that I had 10 turns left and won a score victory by one point, I nuked all of my allies )

But I don't understand what any of this means.

What is a "Specialist Economy"?

What is "Cottage Spam"?

What's the point of having so much gold? I had like 4000 gold during my space race victory attempt yet I couldn't really do anything with it.

How can I speed up research?

I'm just so confused....but I do think it's funny I'm addicted to the game without even understanding how the games play.

Cottage spam is when you build a bunch of cottages in most of your workable tiles. The point of having so much gold is usually to upgrade your obsolete units into newer units. You can speed up research by working more commerce tiles and building research enhancing buildings in your cities. I hope I helped at least a little bit.

 

[Cam_H]

Hopefully many of your queries will be addressed in The War Academy, and if you've yet to see it, Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners is especially good if you're tackling the basics.

Bad luck on the space ship - happened to me too recently in a space race (had 60% chance of victory, but we all know Civ's very special RNG ).

Specialist Economy - discussed in Sisiutil's paper.

Cottage Spam - as Ultimate_Waffle says - also does not mean build Cottages on every tile if your city is food poor ... a citizen must work a Cottage for it to be of benefit and grow.

On gold; further to Ultimate_Waffle's point on upgrading old units, can also be spent on;

(a.) funding or ... that is, if you're not using all of your commerce on and/or already, you can run down your reserves, and also ...

(b.) The Universal Suffrage government civic allows you to 'hurry' production by spending to finish (most) builds, often referred to as 'cash rushing'. The Kremlin global wonder boosts the effectiveness of 'cash rushing'.

(c.) Use it in trades with other tribes.

(d.) Use it to spread any Corporations into new cities (if you want to and/or can) - 'Beyond the Sword' only feature.

Research can be sped up by concentrating your research efforts in one or a small number of cities (again, see Sisiutil's guide re. City Specialisation). You can consider 'lightbulbing' s. Both The Oracle and being the first tribe to discover Liberalism give you a free technology. Focus on research buildings. Consider specialist scientists (the Caste System allows you to run as many Specialist Scientists as you can feed ... better yet with the Representation Government Civic). There's more, but those just described are a start ...

Glad you're enjoying the game! Best of luck!

 

[NintendoTogepi]

I have little idea what you just said (what is a specialist scientist) but okay

 

[madscientist]

I felt the same way my first 40 hours, but you'll get the hang of it.

If you open up the city screen by double clicking the city, to the right are your specialists. Some require a certain building to have acess to them, such as a library for 2 scientists, a forge for 1 engineer, a theater for 2 artists, and a market for 2 merchants. Each specialist replaces a citizan that works you city (the circled areas in your city screen), which basically removes food. SO if you want to run a specialist (requires 2 extra food, make sure you have extra food from a spot (an early farm has usually 3 food, fish gets you 5 food).

A specialist gets you certain bonus
1) Scientist gets you 3 beakers, merchant 3 gold, artist 4 culture (I think), engineer 2 hammers.
2) They also get you Great Person Points(GPP) (a bar at the right bottom of the city screen) which when it hits a certain number (100 GPPs for the first) gets you a great person.

3) The great person, depending on which type, has a unique ability plus the option to lightbulb a technology (scientists are excellent at bulbing philosophy) or settle in the city (scientists get +1 hammer and +6 beakers). Special abilities include academies (From a great scientists which gives +50% beakers to that city), trade missions (for lot's of gold from another civilization), etc.. Read up on them
4) Certain wonders or civics get you more benefits to the specialists. The most common are representation which gets an extra 3 beakers for eeach speiclist or the sisten chapel wonder which get's you +2 culture per specialist.

Feel free to ask any questions on these forums, generally everyone is very helpful. But alot of your questions could be addressed with some of the basic articles mentioned above or just playing some practice round.

Almost winning a space race with 40 hours into the game is not a bad start.

 

[DaveMcW]

SE vs CE is totally irrelevant here.

Focus on the basics. Build a lot of cities, supported by even more workers. Turn on Ctrl+R, and try to claim at least one of every resource. You may have to pry a few resources from the cold, dead hands of your rivals.

 

[Refar]

And read those guide Cam_H pointed you too. It's not too long. And you will not gain nothing from all the advice here, if you dont know the basics...

 

[The Rook]

I've logged 40 hours in this game but I just realized I have no idea how to play it.

40 hours is enough time to master and complete many games, but in civ terms it really is nothing. There will be many people here who have spent much more than 40 hours browsing these boards alone.