Looking to get into Civ

[Brichals]

get into city management, and mess around with moving your city population from working one tile to the next. That way you learn to balance your food - hammer - gold production in a city. On higher levels you HAVE to know how to do this, trust me on that.

Nice to hear back.

For microing things an old Civ mantra.
Try to never work a tile in a city which does not have an improvement on it. It's not an efficient use of a happy face (because each population costs a happy face).

This means making enough workers and keeping them busy selecting which tiles to improve. Or if you just have bad land which is not worth improving, put a citizen as a specialist instead.

 

[Windom]

I tried moving citizens around but instead of the Green Head that's usually there, I get a Green Lock instead. What's the difference?

As for workers, all I'm doing is either building farms, plantation, lumber mills, camps or horse fences. and improvements and roads and trading posts. Any other stuff that I can build?

Oh, I'm about 29 Happiness right now and I keep hunting Barbarians down

 

[Brichals]

I tried moving citizens around but instead of the Green Head that's usually there, I get a Green Lock instead. What's the difference?

As for workers, all I'm doing is either building farms, plantation, lumber mills, camps or horse fences. and improvements and roads and trading posts. Any other stuff that I can build?

Oh, I'm about 29 Happiness right now and I keep hunting Barbarians down

Well when a city grows the governer of that city automatically moves the population around to work the best tiles. You can put it on gold focus, production focus etc then it focusses on the most efficient usage of the population (more or less). This can sometimes mean that it shuffles around and you lose working a tile you actually would prefer. So if you lock it the governer will not touch that and forever keep a population working that tile. e.g. It often happens if you choose 'production focus' the governor will focus less on food tiles and your city will start to starve. So I normally lock a couple of high food tiles in and let the governor focus on the rest.

Yeah what you described for workers seems pretty much everything, every type of tile has a special kind of improvement which just depends on which tile it is. You can also make fortresses but they are not that useful unless you have an aggressive neighbour and a narrow choke point to block off with your fortress (units in a fortress get 50% extra strength)

 

[spider1]

Post patch the Freedom Policy tree ramps up a GP's tile output 100%. This is VERY significant. You can have a GE working an ordinary (no resrouce) hill and get 10 hammers. If you can afford it, a couple of GEs working hills and a couple of citizens at forced farm labor (LOL) and you can have a high production city that is well fed at the same time.

 

[Windom]

Pardon me but what is GE? Please don't tell me that's a Great Engineer ==;

I thought of building forts but stopped since I befriended nearby Civ's so no need to worry. One thing I can't do is build stuff on water...maybe I'm not there yet

 

[mattcrwi]

I tried moving citizens around but instead of the Green Head that's usually there, I get a Green Lock instead. What's the difference?

As for workers, all I'm doing is either building farms, plantation, lumber mills, camps or horse fences. and improvements and roads and trading posts. Any other stuff that I can build?

Oh, I'm about 29 Happiness right now and I keep hunting Barbarians down

I don't think you need to worry about what tiles workers are using until the higher levels. I use the focus picker under citizens and it usually does the job pretty well. For instance when I am negative in gold, I will change some of my cities to emphasize gold until I can find another source of it.

 

[Brichals]

Pardon me but what is GE? Please don't tell me that's a Great Engineer ==;

I thought of building forts but stopped since I befriended nearby Civ's so no need to worry. One thing I can't do is build stuff on water...maybe I'm not there yet

Yeah thats a great engineer. He can build a manufactory on a tile to give (I think) 4 production upgraded to 5 when you research chemistry (I think). Or you can use him to speed up production in a city (often giving enough production to build a wonder in 1 turn). Or you can use any great person to start a golden age. All of these lose the great person, but then you didnt want to use them as scouts

Other great people also can make tile improvements for extra science, gold or culture and the great general can make a citadel which is like a much stronger fortress.

You need to build workboats after researching sailing to improve water tiles on fish, whales or pearls. Later when you discover off sea oil workboats can become oil rigs.

 

[spider1]

Pardon me but what is GE? Please don't tell me that's a Great Engineer ==;

I thought of building forts but stopped since I befriended nearby Civ's so no need to worry. One thing I can't do is build stuff on water...maybe I'm not there yet

LOL, yes, a GE is a Great Engineer who can build a manufactory if you want to plant him on a tile. It's a preferance, but it's what I do post patch with just about all my GPs. (Great People). It didn't use to be this way until a week or so ago, the change to the policy in the last patch changed forever the way I use GPs in this game.

Now, I plop most of them down to build their specific building where before I would use them for their specific mission or to start a golden age. Keep in mind you have to finish that Freedom policy tree to get this effect I'm talking about.

 

[Windom]

Odd, I have Sailors researched but I can't build anything water related.

I used my GP to start a Golden Age and another one for trade, guess I should've built a building instead =.=

So many questions to ask...

Have another one: Other Civ's always propose Research Agreements with me. What is that? Does it affect what I'm currently researching or is another branch of research?

 

[Brichals]

Odd, I have Sailors researched but I can't build anything water related.

I used my GP to start a Golden Age and another one for trade, guess I should've built a building instead =.=

So many questions to ask...

Have another one: Other Civ's always propose Research Agreements with me. What is that? Does it affect what I'm currently researching or is another branch of research?

Your city should be on a coast then you can build a work boat, it is under the units section in the production menu. then when it's built move to a fish tile and improve it like a worker does (you lose the work boat). Research agreements when they mature give you and the partner bunch of beakers towards whatever tech you are researching, greatly speeding up your research rate. There are some policies and wonders which increase the amount of beakers you receive. It used to give you a free tech before this last patch but that was imba lol.

 

[Windom]

lol, I see what I did there. I tried using workers to build boats lol. I have a city next to the coast so that isn't an issue. Great, more stuff to try out when I get home after work

 

[bryanw1995]

Research Agreements (RA's) are critical for a fast tech progression, but you need enough $$ to make them. They are valuable enough that it is often useful to loan some of your gold to an AI to make them (you can loan the ai, say, 33 gold and he'll give you 1 gold per turn for 30 turns). The old RA's just gave you a tech, and they were easy to force down a specific path to beeline critical techs. Now they just give you 50% of the median tech you have available at the end of the RA. Still useful, but much better for filling out the entire tech tree rather evenly rather than beelining 3 steps down a specific branch.

 

[Drago Askani]

Research Agreements (RA's) are critical for a fast tech progression, but you need enough $$ to make them. They are valuable enough that it is often useful to loan some of your gold to an AI to make them (you can loan the ai, say, 33 gold and he'll give you 1 gold per turn for 30 turns). The old RA's just gave you a tech, and they were easy to force down a specific path to beeline critical techs. Now they just give you 50% of the median tech you have available at the end of the RA. Still useful, but much better for filling out the entire tech tree rather evenly rather than beelining 3 steps down a specific branch.

Depends, you can play as Babylon and still tech up sick fast and hardly do any ra's.

 

[starrywisdom]

Civ5 is for casuals, Civ4 will make you a fanatic.

Care to elaborate?

 

[spider1]

Depends, you can play as Babylon and still tech up sick fast and hardly do any ra's.

A turn 25 acadamy more than pays for itself though out the game. Even more so under the new Freedom finisher, so I couldn't agree with you more. My last game I didn't use a single GS to bulb a tech, I planted every darn one of them in an acadamy (just to see how that would actually work out), and I was kicking scientific butt with only two RAs the whole game.

 

[Brichals]

A turn 25 acadamy more than pays for itself though out the game. Even more so under the new Freedom finisher, so I couldn't agree with you more. My last game I didn't use a single GS to bulb a tech, I planted every darn one of them in an acadamy (just to see how that would actually work out), and I was kicking scientific butt with only two RAs the whole game.

Indeed, if we ever get to Alpha Centauri we'll probably find Nebuchadnezzar already there like 'Sup. What took you so long'

 

[mattcrwi]

Care to elaborate?

Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword Expansion (cIV BTS) has MANY more features because it is two expansions deep into the main game. It has also has had many patches to improve the small issues that matter to the fanatics. More features isn't always better though, it can be very confusing to new players.

civ 5 has less features but is much more accessible (less confusing due to less features),has new (IMO better) play mechanics, has better visuals, and is not as difficult due to the AI not handling the new one unit per tile mechanic very well.

civ 5 will get to the point of having as much depth as cIV BTS but it is not there yet. That is assuming they do the same thing to civ 5 and put out 2 new expansions eventually.

 

[bryanw1995]

Depends, you can play as Babylon and still tech up sick fast and hardly do any ra's.

True, but as a beginning player do we want to teach him how to win on lower levels with a single DLC civ, or give him general strategies that he can adapt to each civ's special abilities?

 

[SuperJay]

Most longtime players now enjoy civ 5 after the past few patches as well as civ 4.

You don't have any possible way of knowing what "most longtime players" like or dislike, do you? Please don't make such claims on behalf of some sort of 'silent majority' of Civ fans - you know your own opinions well, so confine your reports to those preferences and let other people speak for themselves.

@Windom - welcome to the forums and to the legions of Civilization fans! Glad to hear you're enjoying the game, good luck with your quest for world domination - and never, ever turn your back on Montezuma.

 

[bryanw1995]

I'm not referring to the "silent majority", I'm referring to the extremely positive feedback that civ 5 has gotten when the past several patches have come out. I'm not sure why you've got such a need to criticize civ5 and/or anybody who plays it. Maybe you would be more welcome back in the civ4 forums.