Belgrade fell on 29. He's first in military and pretty much everything else. Obviously I'm dead last.
Since I had nothing to lose, I settled the forested hill anyways (take it Shorty! ), pumped out archers and couple of immortals in both cities and beelined Construction.
Right away he came to whine about my settling next to him and having troops on his borders. Well, dude, it's you who acts like a jerk and places cities in my face. Be a nice wonder spamming peacemongering neighbor and I won't have an army on your borders. Uh... wait. I will... NM... Don't worry, Shorty, I'm not gonna DoW you with my archers. I'm just gonna sell you my luxes and my horses. We're great trading partners! Best buddies, right?
Two turns later Civ5 irony kicks in.
I cleaned barb camp to the south to befriend Rio just couple of turns earlier and added 250 for ally.
Defending for 2 turns with so many archers wasn't a problem, and after upgrade Shorty was doomed. His units were committing mass suicide near my capital, I took Lyon (stupidly kept this garbage city... oh well) and was about to liberate Belgrade when the irony showed its face again and kicked me you know where.
Let's the trolling continue... Fortunately, I was very close to hitting GA. You gotta love Persia for its GA. I proceeded with my push on Belgrade, liberated it but had no cash to ally. Was rather excited when the Danes appeared. Nope, no luck, they were broke too.
So I had to deal with GW on my own. I placed a citadel on silver and capture Paris losing one scout which had to be sacrificed to protect GG. After that I took Troyes and got Marseille in a peace deal. Overall I lost 2 immortals (one due to misclick, a must for me, and another one was kicked out of Belgrade into CB's fire range) and that scout.
I'm 4 turns short of NC with 6 cities, 5 of them are pretty decent. Have a continent to myself and Nappy as trading partner. This game is far from being won though. There is a runaway somewhere in the ocean which took another AI out early and I can do nothing about him/her. On the positive, there is only three capitals remaining and frigates rule.
If I continue, I'll beeline Astronomy, meet everyone else asap and hopefully finish off with frigates. Of course, I can be trolled again, and it's possible AI's capitals aren't coastal, then I'll have to whip up plan B.
No religion in this game. Not even a pantheon. I guess I could've built another settler and settled near Uluru instead of overkilling with archers, dunno. Lack of religion is a reasonable price as far as I'm concerned.
Not sure I will continue though. I have two games in progress already. So here's the save if anyone is interested.
coanda, there is no shame in starting at the mid-level (Prince-King) to learn ALL of the mechanics of the game. Just think of it as a tutorial. It doesn't matter if you win or lose or whether you'll be bored or not, you need to learn more Civ5 and to unlearn some of the foolishness from Civ4.
The problem is you learn very little by playing on these levels. If you're familiar with Civ series, you don't need to know Civ5 specific mechanics to win. You do some research, do some growth, some war and win.
I know, i was thinking more of learning the mechanics first (unit capabilities, promotions, trading, religion, city-states, diplomacy, social policies, religion, naval/embarking, tile improvements and workings) then learning to win on higher levels.
I know, i was thinking more of learning the mechanics first (unit capabilities, promotions, trading, diplomacy, social policies, religion, naval/embarking, tile improvements and workings) then learning to win on higher levels.
But don't you learn in the process? Is it just me? There are lots of things I don't know yet and learn something new every day, never bothered me before.
A bit of topic but i cant seem to start either the deity challenge saves or the save posted by op in this thread. It sais missing dlc but i have the goty edition with the g&k expansion. I play from sweden and my game is directly downloaded from steam if that matters. Any one have any ideas ?
A bit of topic but i cant seem to start either the deity challenge saves or the save posted by op in this thread. It sais missing dlc but i have the goty edition with the g&k expansion. I play from sweden and my game is directly downloaded from steam if that matters. Any one have any ideas ?
Wow, I loved this thread. I learned so much and it was fascinating to read all the tips and tricks. I tried deity once and wasn't sad when I lost, but intrigued on how to beat it one of these days...
Well done coanda for having the gumption to give Deity a go right off the bat and thanks for providing the Community with an entertaining and useful thread.
@The Pilgrim, may I ask: How many hours have you logged on CiV and the Civ series overall? I've put in 413 hours into CiV (never played the old games) and usually play for fun on King or Emperor if I want a little bit more of a challenge. I don't feel ready for a serious Immortal or Deity game yet.
Wow, I loved this thread. I learned so much and it was fascinating to read all the tips and tricks. I tried deity once and wasn't sad when I lost, but intrigued on how to beat it one of these days...
@The Pilgrim, may I ask: How many hours have you logged on CiV and the Civ series overall? I've put in 413 hours into CiV (never played the old games) and usually play for fun on King or Emperor if I want a little bit more of a challenge. I don't feel ready for a serious Immortal or Deity game yet.
Heh, after 413 hours I was playing on Chieftain difficulty believing with all my heart that other difficulties exist just to make the menu look prettier. It was back in Civ1 days some good almost 20 years ago (thanks a lot for reminding me how old I am ) and Chieftain was the easiest one.
I'm not near Steam, but I think I passed 1500 hours mark or somewhere close to that and number of hours I spent playing all Civ games is too embarrassing to be published. Many many thousands. Up to Civ3 I thought higher levels are not supposed to be played by humans period. Then I found very good internet communities and realized how clueless I was. Doesn't mean I improved much, I was very bad at Civ3, barely mediocre at Civ 4 and still have a long way to go in Civ 5. However, that implies I'll totally kick ass in Civ6. Can't wait.
I won't set any record for number of hours played though. There are many players who played way more than me and know much more about game mechanics. It does come with practice. A lot of game knowledge is provided by this community. Specifically this forum (Strategy and tips) is extremely helpful. Thus people should never be shy to ask questions. Sharing maps with other and comparing strategies is also great way to learn things you might miss on your own. Game of the Month, for example/ Even if you're not interested to play competitively, trying the map and seeing how others did in the same circumstances is insightful. HoF folks are just crazy. No effort is too big effort for them and their knowledge of the game is so extensive, it's scary. You can always take a shot at one of the Minor/Major games or just lurk, or ask questions. Video LP's are another way to learn, although time consuming but very entertaining (in my opinion at least). MadDjinn doesn't deserve advertisement, because he stopped making deity LP's, so I won't recommend watching any of his. And hopefully he'll feel ashamed.
Bottom line, it's all about one's willingness to learn and invest some effort in the process. Be active on forums, ask questions, read strategy guides and practice and you will learn for sure.
You may be right about Civ6 but for a different reason. With the shrinking market for PC games, soon to be a small niche, Civ6 will have to be "accessible" to as many customers as possible just to break even.
You may be right about Civ6 but for a different reason. With the shrinking market for PC games, soon to be a small niche, Civ6 will have to be "accessible" to as many customers as possible just to break even.
Closing thoughts and questions. Sorry, no pretty pictures this time.
@Optional: I missed your comment because I was writing up a session at the time you posted. Your advice about being unable to rely fully on diplomacy proved well-placed - I was surprised and rather pleased by the way the Civ5 AI is willing to just go for the throat even on friends. Thank you for the tip about growing cities counting food / gaining citizens first; every extra hammer helps!
@Browd: Yeah, I decided you were probably right. I had no faith that Napoleon would leave me alive for that much longer even if I did take peace, and I would have no hope of catching up / winning a future war.
@regeneration64: I was actually very impressed with how useful a city could be for defensive purposes. I parked an archer in it, an immortal on the edge to keep a line of escape out of it open, and killed many units while they were all busy battering at the city. Do cities continue to be that useful in future ages?
@Buccaneer: I actually did move the warrior first; I just moved it the wrong way apparently. He was already somewhat east of my settler, so I moved him further east to maximize the number of tiles revealed; it seems I should have queued in on the floodplains as a reason to scout west instead.
@Optional, again: Thank you greatly for that link to the diplo. tables. So if I'm reading it right, for Napoleon for example... he focuses heavily on expansion, doesn't keep grudges, moderately war-prone, chooses his wars much more based on greed or fear rather than diplomatic relations, and is otherwise a pretty average AI?
@The Pilgrim: Thank you for the advice on opening build orders; I'll keep it in mind in future games. I wish I'd paid more attention to your comments about Troyes being soft; I ignored Troyes on the theory that a newly-founded size-1 city wasn't a threat and the war would be settled by whether I could get to Paris, but on reflection I probably should have crushed it first then pivoted back east. Civ4 instincts of "if you have even a minor military edge, go for the throat right away" may have led me astray.
@Browd (again): Interesting to see that smaller worlds are more cramped. Would you recommend playing on Standard sized worlds while learning then, or is it just flavor?
@MerkQT: Yup, game over it was. I think everyone either suspected or knew as much from my prior update, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to play it out (since everyone suspected or knew it was game over from turn 0 anyways!).
@Mohed: Oh man, I wish you'd warned me Deity was hard before I started, what a surprise! (I jest, I jest). Also, nice call on the "turn 80;" I think the turn where I finally gave up (having re-lost Pasagardae and watching Napoleon close in unstoppably on my capital) was right about then.
I didn't even consider settling on the copper when I started this game - settling on a resource that could be improved early was almost always a big mistake in Civ4, but that's definitely something that changed in Civ5. Learning mistake.
Interesting to see that they finally made city spam not the only reasonable way to go. What do you do if you end up going for a military victory? Do you just take capitals and raze the rest, do you make a bunch of puppets, do you keep the cities because city spam is acceptable once you're in mid- or late-game?
It sounds like diplomatically, my options were pretty constrained this game (at least until post-Optics). But playing AIs off against each other is standard operating procedure for Civ4 too. How expensive is it, typically, to bribe an AI civ to attack another?
Your advice (abandon NC, crank archers) was well-chosen and in fact is exactly what I started doing; I think it was just too late to save that game even by turn 41, and I just hadn't realized it yet.
Thank you for the detailed advice.
@Syailendra: "Remember you should only kill his melee units, as archers can't take cities"... more like "learn you should only kill his melee units". Fortunately that's what I ended up doing anyways (since the melee units were the easy kills). So... brilliant by accident?
I may keep this save around and restart it several games from now, but there's just a lot of mid- and late-game stuff I need to see before I can make a real tilt at this game I think.
@Buccaneer (again): I follow with your opinion regarding Civ2 and Civ4. Too early for me to say how I feel about Civ5; it has stuff I love and stuff I'm not sure about (for example... I love the new religion / social policy mechanics for encouraging detailed planning and customizing towards a goal. The ancient ruins seem much better integrated than goody huts were. I'm unsure about the 1upt and ranged units since it seems like the AI just isn't very good with them. On the other hand, at least it's not all about a huge collateral-damage stack any more.).
@The Pilgrim (again): Thanks so much for your own play-through demonstration. That Napoleon is... terrifying. I think you got a lot of mileage out of settling Pasargadae when you were ready for war, rather than my approach (settle first, prepare for war later). I need to keep that in mind myself in the future. If you're going to slap someone and throw down the gauntlet, use a big beefy metal gauntlet!
Thank you to everyone who said I did "not unbelievably bad," and I'm glad at least some people enjoyed the thread. All the advice has been helpful, and will be taken into account on my next game.
---------------------------------------------------------------
My own reflection on the last game:
Opening build order was problematic. I'm actually not convinced that a scout first would have given me that much tangible payoff in this game (simply because I got all the ancient ruins north, south, and west of my capital anyways, but that was just luck. And more scouting would absolutely have let me identify the big problem with this game (semi-isolated with a nearby Napoleon) more quickly. A monument could have been great though; that extra culture would have gotten me some social policies much more swiftly. Getting a worker that early isn't as huge as it was, because early-game worker improvements in general tend to be a bit weaker (no more +4-food farms).
City placement could also have been improved. I needed to be aware that improved resources don't get as big a bonus over unimproved as in Civ4, so there's no a huge penalty to settling on them. I also needed to see that floodplains in the starting shot as a sign of river to the west, and go scouting that way. 1 extra gold on a tile is a lot bigger deal in Civ5 than in Civ4, because gold is so much more flexible early in the game (it's not just for paying upkeep any more!). Finally, that city-on-a-hill by the mountain was actually a beautiful choke point for an early war, and "blocking" the AI with culture while avoiding war seems like a much less practical strategy now - the AIs actually recognize when you're trying it and punish you for doing so.
I was slow to recognize and accept that war with Napoleon was inevitable and was coming soon. I don't know if all Civ5 AIs are like this, but I was actually pretty impressed with Napoleon's strategic play this game - he seemed to behave as if he was actually thinking about what he needed and going after it, instead of just hoping to random-walk his way to victory like Civ4 AIs. His tactical play, not so much... the AI seems to really need overwhelming numbers or more advanced units.
Fighting against a more advanced opponent is painful in this game. 1 unit per tile makes it hard to even bring enough firepower to bear on something like a composite bowman to kill it with archers. There may be tricks I'm not aware of, or maybe you just need to have truly overwhelming numbers to make it work.
Citizen micro and being strict about setting and following priorities in a game seem to be alive and well in Civ5, but habits from Civ4 on those seem to have carried over pretty well to the Civ5 (at least, as far as I can tell).
My thinking was still along the lines of "settle or conquer enough land for at least six cities, then plan for mid-game" but some of the comments here suggest to me that "settle or conquer enough land for at least three or four good cities, then plan for midgame" might be a better rule of thumb for Civ5.
Tactically, ranged units were exactly as strong as I'd thought and others suggested they would be. Part of that may just be because the AI didn't know how to deal with them properly - rather than flanking my archers and closing in, they wasted time hitting cities and my Immortal and gave the archers free shots. Double-healing for Immortals is extraordinarily strong - I'd dismissed it as a minor boost initially, until I got a chance to see it in action. Units in combat spend more time just holding their ground without attacking while ranged units shoot or other units flank than I had expected. Immortals really shine at holding ground.
Not sure what difficulty to go for next. As may be apparent, I don't particularly mind losing a few games while learning. But I would like to see the mid- and late-game develop in my next game - last at least to the Industrial period if not a bit later.
Again, thanks to everyone for the advice and help.
Maybe. And maybe not. If I have to bet, I'll go with the latter. For his first attempt he did not bad at all and learned a lot. Immortal is manageable. If you do most things right, there is no reason not to win. On emperor you can do most things wrong and still win, because AI can't.
There's something you're missing then. Emperor level AI is not capable of doing any serious damage to competent player. I'll plug the Deity Challenges ones again. You don't need to be deity player yourself to participate. You don't have to win. It's helpful enough just to play the same map as other, more experienced players do and compare notes. Austrian map (challenge #3) is very easy (relatively to deity, of course ). You may want to check it out.
Oh I'm well aware of missing something. Most of the time I actually can pinpoint the particular thing I'm missing. It has to do with the way I like to play sometimes. Not purely focussed on science output, getting things done before a certain amount of turns, counting hammers and beakers ..etc etc
I sometimes like to just 'play along'. At that point I have more fun not walking a 'straight' path to victory but let the gameplay lead me to some other fun.
I hope you understand what I mean here.
When I do that I tend to forget keeping science up or paying way to much for the enourmous army or maintenance of all the buildings I liked to built in the cities
For instance when I'm in a nice location having a nice science output but getting annoyed by a neighbour I sometimes cant resist attacking that neighbour and thereby forgetting the path I 'should' take in order to make a chance of winning the game.
The Diety challenges made me a better player. I always played Prince with a domination victory but I'm up to winning 90% of my Emperor games now. Took a shot at Immortal but noticed making a few mistakes in built-orders or science path can realy ruin your game. I won a few on Immortal however.
Never won on Diety though.
I'm since forever on this forum, registered only a few months ago and will for sure enter a Diety challenge. For now I follow these challanges closely and learn learn learn from all the comments made.
You may be right about Civ6 but for a different reason. With the shrinking market for PC games, soon to be a small niche, Civ6 will have to be "accessible" to as many customers as possible just to break even.
I was actually very impressed with how useful a city could be for defensive purposes. I parked an archer in it, an immortal on the edge to keep a line of escape out of it open, and killed many units while they were all busy battering at the city. Do cities continue to be that useful in future ages?
Even more so. If you really want to understand how useful city's range is, try to attack a city on hill, with ranged guy parked in it, walls and Oligarchy SP. Some cities are so strong, they kill modern units in one shot. Another point for Tradition. Not enough by itself, but if you're planning a defensive turtling game and have aggressive neighbors, it helps.
So if I'm reading it right, for Napoleon for example... he focuses heavily on expansion, doesn't keep grudges, moderately war-prone, chooses his wars much more based on greed or fear rather than diplomatic relations, and is otherwise a pretty average AI?
Roughly. Sometimes RNG messes AI's flavors, but that's the average case. However, on higher difficulties (immortal/deity) AI starts with so many bonuses and you're so handicapped, that all leaders see you as weak and easy target. Thus no matter how friendly you're trying to be and how well in your opinion your diplo game is, if you're close, AI will DoW. Any AI more or less. With lower probability for some and higher for others, but number one reason for attack is geographical closeness. And someone like Napoleon who doesn't need a reason to attack will do that earlier rather than later.
Couple of days ago one of forum members (you don't mind, do you? ) showed me the most entertaining screenshot I've seen for a long time. Deity, pangea. Two neighboring AI double DoW him on turn 12. That's not typical, but also happens.
Thank you for the advice on opening build orders; I'll keep it in mind in future games. I wish I'd paid more attention to your comments about Troyes being soft; I ignored Troyes on the theory that a newly-founded size-1 city wasn't a threat and the war would be settled by whether I could get to Paris, but on reflection I probably should have crushed it first then pivoted back east. Civ4 instincts of "if you have even a minor military edge, go for the throat right away" may have led me astray.
That's the right set of mind. Usually after taking major cities AI will give up on some of the smaller ones in exchange for peace. When you fall short, though, and can't take the capital, at least you've got something. Being involved in a war you don't benefit from is recipe for disaster on deity.
@Browd (again): Interesting to see that smaller worlds are more cramped. Would you recommend playing on Standard sized worlds while learning then, or is it just flavor?
Personally, I find smaller maps to be a little tougher not so much due to lack of land, as much as lack of trading partners. On this note - I continued Persian game for a while.
Spoiler:
I stuck to the plan, beelined frigates and trained/bought some galeases. Then I met Celts, who apparently took out the Iroquois (WUUT? ) early and were about to finish off the Byzantines. Their lead was massive. 20% in tech, almost 5 as much military. Very little chance to fight against them. With only 2 civs remaining I was running out of options. No trading/RA partners made it much more difficult. No happiness, slower research, less cash. I wiped out France for its iron and since I couldn't match Boudica, I went for the Danes. In the meanwhile, she has a massive continent to herself with huge army and plenty of resources. Me, on the other hand, with roughly the same number of cities, I'm far behind and chances to win are slim and heavily depend on availability of late game resources. She has them all (don't know about uranium), I've just discovered coal. I'm not saying more AI on map would've improved my chances significantly, but at least I'd have someone to trade with and maybe even to team up against the Celt.
That being said, I barely play on non standard maps. Can be wrong here. Maybe Browd or someone else knows better.
How expensive is it, typically, to bribe an AI civ to attack another?
Depends on diplo map, power balance and specific leader's aggressiveness. If one AI really hates other AI and likes you, it won't be expensive at all. Might be very cheap actually. If they like each other, it's almost impossible to bribe them. If they dislike you, may be the same or they'll demand all your luxes. Overall it's very effective tactics especially on deity, where each turn AI's fight with each other and not you is opportunity to take a breath.
"Remember you should only kill his melee units, as archers can't take cities"\
I'll expand on this if you don't mind. You should take out siege units and advanced ranged units first since they do the most damage. If they reduce city defense to 0 and there is one bloody enemy warrior with 1HP survived due to bad RNG, your city is gone.
I'm unsure about the 1upt and ranged units since it seems like the AI just isn't very good with them. On the other hand, at least it's not all about a huge collateral-damage stack any more.).
AI sucks at combat, unfortunately. Totally screwed by 1UPT. On the other hand, it's much better mechanic overall. Nothing can be worse than stacks of doom.
Thanks so much for your own play-through demonstration. That Napoleon is... terrifying. I think you got a lot of mileage out of settling Pasargadae when you were ready for war, rather than my approach (settle first, prepare for war later). I need to keep that in mind myself in the future. If you're going to slap someone and throw down the gauntlet, use a big beefy metal gauntlet!
It's more like having a plan. If you look and first screenshot, you'll see I have no military at all at that point. But the moment I settled I rush bought two archers (usually I'd buy a settler with the money, then again, due to lack of traders, I couldn't have both archers and settler), started working on another one in new city and queued a bunch in Persepolis. And kept some cash for future upgrades.
Be sure that most of people did and will keep doing so. Those who didn't - it's their problem. They live in ivory tower and have nothing to do with the rest of us. This community always help players who are willing to learn instead of you know... "OMG!!!!111 this game is soooo bad, AI is soooo cheaty, I was building all these wonders, no units, no research no nothing and then cheaty AI came and took my city! Not fair! Let's put Firaxis on fire!!!"
the AI seems to really need overwhelming numbers or more advanced units.
Now imagine how AI 'feels'. Human player will do more with less. It's enough to have a small but advanced army to overcome AI's hordes. But fighting on tech parity on deity is tedious, AI has so much more units. However, with good tactics, even that is possible.
My thinking was still along the lines of "settle or conquer enough land for at least six cities, then plan for mid-game" but some of the comments here suggest to me that "settle or conquer enough land for at least three or four good cities, then plan for midgame" might be a better rule of thumb for Civ5.
It's mostly map and taste dependent. Some maps favor expansion, some less. More cities = more of everything will always stay true. However, there are lots of builders, role-players and such who don't like to play militaristic/expansive game and thanks to them the devs put a lot of effort into balancing tall empires and wide empires. You can success with either.
Of course. Most of the players are like that, the rest are playing competitively. The only thing matters is your enjoyment.
The Diety challenges made me a better player. I always played Prince with a domination victory but I'm up to winning 90% of my Emperor games now. Took a shot at Immortal but noticed making a few mistakes in built-orders or science path can realy ruin your game. I won a few on Immortal however.
Never won on Diety though.
Don't know about you, but for me 90% success is a good point to move up. Or at least try to. If that's something you want to begin with. Viable strategies on immortal are more restrictive, that's true. But not to the point you have a carved in stone path you can't step off. More like there is an easy way and there is a harder (creative) way. You can get creative to the extent and still win. Just don't overkill with creativeness.
If you aim to win game on deity it's good start on higher difficulties. Maybe not on deity but at least on immortal. You learn bad habits(wonder spam,religion etc) if you play at lower difficulties. Some people play for challenge and some for joy. I consider myself something between these two. I have never played civ5 below emperor and when I play emperor I play only OCC
Edit: I usually win on immortal(70%) and since fall patch I haven't been able to beat deity on standard settings. Still I usually play on deity
@Mohed: Oh man, I wish you'd warned me Deity was hard before I started, what a surprise! (I jest, I jest). Also, nice call on the "turn 80;" I think the turn where I finally gave up (having re-lost Pasagardae and watching Napoleon close in unstoppably on my capital) was right about then.
I didn't even consider settling on the copper when I started this game - settling on a resource that could be improved early was almost always a big mistake in Civ4, but that's definitely something that changed in Civ5. Learning mistake.
Interesting to see that they finally made city spam not the only reasonable way to go. What do you do if you end up going for a military victory? Do you just take capitals and raze the rest, do you make a bunch of puppets, do you keep the cities because city spam is acceptable once you're in mid- or late-game?
It sounds like diplomatically, my options were pretty constrained this game (at least until post-Optics). But playing AIs off against each other is standard operating procedure for Civ4 too. How expensive is it, typically, to bribe an AI civ to attack another?
Your advice (abandon NC, crank archers) was well-chosen and in fact is exactly what I started doing; I think it was just too late to save that game even by turn 41, and I just hadn't realized it yet.
Thank you for the detailed advice.
Typically one would puppet the cities witch have wonders, strategic and/or happines recourses or strategic value. Be careful tho as big cities will have a huge impact on happiness so so preferably puppeted cities need to be restrained from growing again. One dose this by tradeposting all the farms tile, witch i do, and forting all the bonus food tiles, witch i dont given my ocd .
I only anex cities if i have a gigantic reason, say you are planing to have 4 cities and you only build tree then capture a capital or you need a costal city and you take a capital on the coast or you need a city on the front far away from you core. When anexing you always puppet the city first then anex after resistans period is over.
Rest of the cities you raze or sell to other players. For example in a resent game carthage was running away and i had been keeping them in a constant war with siam, witch destroyed siam. When i started capturing cities close to siam i sold them to siam, for cheap or free, just to beef up siam a bit to let them continue slowing down chartage until i was ready to attack. Had happiness issues at the time and the cities i took were big french cities.
I was never fond of city spamming, although you can with ics strategy, so i like the fact that you have a smal number of core cities now. You can spend some time microing them to get the most out of them while. That also makes it huge to pick your sities carefully.
When it comes to rushing out the NC i dont do that very well, except when going for a science victory from the start, because i like to get my other stuff on line first. Then again i think im very bad at the early game and you shulden't pay me any attention on this point. This usually makes my first major war a bit harder then it should be, i think, but from there i catch up in science and all is well.
I think the best thing you can do is just restart the same game doing it beter this time around as a learning experience. I used to do that and also rewind a good 30 to 40 turnes until i became confident i could beat the difficulty level, altho i have only managed to do it once after the latest patch, granted i play much less now a day. I used to be able to beat deity all the time before but it has become much harder now.
Just go again and post a bit more frequently, i have the feeling you like to post and also i think you have entertaining posts, so that ppl can both teach and learn from this thread.
Good luck.
Ps. I was also jesting in the bla bla part.
Thank you greatly for that link to the diplo. tables. So if I'm reading it right, for Napoleon for example... he focuses heavily on expansion, doesn't keep grudges, moderately war-prone, chooses his wars much more based on greed or fear rather than diplomatic relations, and is otherwise a pretty average AI?
Very war-prone. Although it's a long time ago that I last checked the tables, but he used to be the only one besides Montezuma that got an 8 for war-willingness. Most civs have been toned down by 1 in some, as many forum members were complaining about the AI warring so much. The developers listen to that, and often adjust things.
Napoleon probably has a 7 now, but I remember his 'boldness' was very high as well, meaning he will even go to war if the numbers are not in his favour.
It's a long time ago that I came across him in a game, but I remember he can declare, lose the war, and declare again and again and again... Not your average civ. Average civs... maybe Germany, America... Polynesia (speaking about their 'character').
As an aside, I find that there's to much complaining in this forum about about this war mongering from the AI. I often find the AI tame. I've been in several Succession Games and just followed a few more, everyone can read the write-ups of these games here on the forums, there hasn't been an attack from the AI besides a warrior rush by Harald after we slapped our first own (after the capital) right in the direction of his capital.
If you do that, and it's a juicy spot, then yes, the AI will declare on you in 9 out of 10 occasions. But if you don't do that, the chance of being declared on is not so big at all.
Civ5 is a game with lots and lots of units, you can't expect a game with so many units just to give you peace, can you? This is not a city builder like Anno 1404. There should be some war in it, and I think the game has already become too tame now.
With some experience with the diplo AI in Civ5 you can suss them out quite well, and can see most conflicts coming, or maybe stay out of it.
I'm mainly writing this, coanda, so that you don't get the impression that Civ5 is just war, war, war and little else. Although Deity, cramped map, Napoleon nearest neighbour, yeah, might be war, war, war. But that's not an average setting!
@Browd (again): Interesting to see that smaller worlds are more cramped. Would you recommend playing on Standard sized worlds while learning then, or is it just flavor?
Personally I wasn't even aware that 'small' was more cramped then 'standard'. I've read in the map scripts that the largest sizes have been truncated to aid performance, but I never checked this. Browd is obviously more into the maths.
There's a couple of things you can do if you want a slightly more relaxed expansion phase; lower the sea level, leave out a few CS's, or just go into your game files: Program files/Steam/SteamApps/common/Sid Meier's Civilization V/assets/Gameplay/XML/Gameinfo/CIV5Worlds; change the 42 x 66 size to 44 x 72 or something - just stick to even numbers. Any problem that can arise from meddling with the game files can be sorted with a file integrity check through Steam - this will restore files to their original state.
Anyway, that's just mentioning some possibilities... if you like it a little less cramped.
Not sure what difficulty to go for next. As may be apparent, I don't particularly mind losing a few games while learning. But I would like to see the mid- and late-game develop in my next game - last at least to the Industrial period if not a bit later.
If your going to pick a different game then I think you would do well enough on Imortal, because you will still get slapped around a bit. If you make a thread about the game then it would make for an interesting learning experience for everyone.
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It was back in Civ1 days some good almost 20 years ago (thanks a lot for reminding me how old I am 
Many many thousands. Up to Civ3 I thought higher levels are not supposed to be played by humans period. 
That's not typical, but also happens. 
This community always help players who are willing to learn instead of you know... "OMG!!!!111 this game is soooo bad, AI is soooo cheaty, I was building all these wonders, no units, no research no nothing and then cheaty AI came and took my city! Not fair! Let's put Firaxis on fire!!!" 
for ally. 
) early and were about to finish off the Byzantines. Their lead was massive. 20% in tech, almost 5 as much military. Very little chance to fight against them. With only 2 civs remaining I was running out of options. No trading/RA partners made it much more difficult. No happiness, slower research, less cash. I wiped out France for its iron and since I couldn't match Boudica, I went for the Danes. In the meanwhile, she has a massive continent to herself with huge army and plenty of resources. Me, on the other hand, with roughly the same number of cities, I'm far behind and chances to win are slim and heavily depend on availability of late game resources. She has them all (don't know about uranium), I've just discovered coal. I'm not saying more AI on map would've improved my chances significantly, but at least I'd have someone to trade with and maybe even to team up against the Celt.
