Need help in rexing

[Gamer1291]

Hey guys i am a very big fan of civilization played all the series and its amazing and satisfying.

Ok i hav a question in civ 5 should i keep building settlers and build cities until i run out of happiness?

And one more strange thing i want to know is about strategic resources like horses and iron when u build improvement it shows on top 5 iron and 0 used so i can only make 5 units that require iron then i run out of iron???.Do i have to find another iron to continue my military units?

 

[Chiyochan]

Hey guys i am a very big fan of civilization played all the series and its amazing and satisfying.

Ok i hav a question in civ 5 should i keep building settlers and build cities until i run out of happiness?

And one more strange thing i want to know is about strategic resources like horses and iron when u build improvement it shows on top 5 iron and 0 used so i can only make 5 units that require iron then i run out of iron???.Do i have to find another iron to continue my military units?

generaly unless you have a means to stay happy rexing is a worthless strategy, if you want to ignore happiness as some do, you should settle till you can no longer do so and use your tech lead to get you the army you need to take on other civs with your poor combat bonus. it can be quite an effective strategy since the AI is rather poor. but its generally not as fun in my opinion.

You cant really over settle though, 10 unhappiness is trivially easy to overcome and once you hit it you cant build any more settlers. the most efficient rexing will involve you hooking up as much happyness as you can, and getting enough gold to befriend city states for luxury resources. dont neglect your infrastructure as roads not only provide +1 happyness with the liberty socal policy tree, but also increase your gold for befriending city states and therefor increasing the ammount you can settle.

I really like the shared happiness because rexing in civ 5 is no longer really possible to the same extent. theres merely the definition to expansive and non expansive empires. the only true rexing strategy thats similar to past games is the aforementioned con questing spree as you will actually take a huge dip in your economy, in fact, depending on your rate of conquest you might never recover, some just keep on going, once you hit rock bottom on happiness the repercussions don't get any worse.

 

[Gamer1291]

Hey thanx for the reply.

So approx how many cities should i have by the end of the game?.In the early game what is the optimal number of cities required to maintain overall empire?.

 

[Chiyochan]

Hey thanx for the reply.

So approx how many cities should i have by the end of the game?.In the early game what is the optimal number of cities required to maintain overall empire?.

Generaly speaking it depends on first if you care about happiness, then all of them if you don't if you do how big you want your cities to be, bigger cities need more happyness and production so build less cities. in practice this means you will need all the resources and a fair number of happy buildings. smaller closer together cities are much easier to maintain however.

theres no real optimum number because you can win the game without looking at your happiness meter more then once. here optimum means how much fun you have building things and improving cities.

 

[milk steak]

There's a couple of ways to go about it:

Social Policies -- There's quite a few that are aimed to combat unhappiness. Notable ones include Planned Economy (-50% unhappiness from # of cities), and the Patronage one that nets you +50% happiness from luxury resources provided by a city state.

Wonders -- I think there's one that reduces unhappiness from # of cities by 50%.

Trading -- Trade with the AI or ally with city states to get luxury resources you're missing.

Buildings -- Build Colosseums first, then Theater next, then the next expensive then, etc.

 

[SnuggilyD]

And one more strange thing i want to know is about strategic resources like horses and iron when u build improvement it shows on top 5 iron and 0 used so i can only make 5 units that require iron then i run out of iron???.Do i have to find another iron to continue my military units?

In CiV your strategic resources (iron, horses, etc...) are finite. If you have an Iron mine that provides 5 iron, it means you can only build 5 units that require iron. Once you have built those 5 units you can't build anymore units that require iron, unless you find access to another source of iron.

However, that iron isn't permanently gone, it will come back if one of your Iron Units is killed. That unit just uses the iron while its in existence.

There are many units that don't require strategic resources to build, but the ones that do are significantly more powerful.

 

[Tale]

I'd been wondering about that strategic resources thing. I had iron at some point then stopped having it and had no clue what happened.

 

[Benholio]

I'd been wondering about that strategic resources thing. I had iron at some point then stopped having it and had no clue what happened.

City states can give you strategic resources and then you could lose access to them if your influence drops with the city state or if they lose access to the resource because of a pillaged hex or something.

Either that or you or your puppet states built buildings/units that used them up.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

As a general rule of thumb, there is no general rule of thumb regarding the number of cities you should build. Every game will play out differently based on a great number of factors.

 

[King Jason]

Something I've started doing is building my cities further away than usual and then backfilling. Or if I'm saving up the gold to buy a settler, rather than buy first, I build first... Travel X distance, plop down the city, then buy the next settler in the new city so I'm closer to my next destination if it's further in the same direction.

 

[skallben]

I believe REX works, maybe not above Emperor as that is what I play currently. I wrote a little thing what I did in my last few games. Be critical though as I'm by no means any expert, I just felt like sharing a strategy that worked for me.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=386980

I'd like to put more emphasis on city planning than what I mention in that thread. Geography is very important. Rivers and forests are your friends. Remember the purpose of the city you found, it's just not to get resources the first 50 turns but to actually develop into a role. Cities may overlap, it is unlikely game will last until you use all 36 hexes. I like to sometimes have a production segment inbetween two cities so I can swap the tiles to the city that needs production alot. As different paths in buildings become clearer, it's for the best to specialize more heavy and not look back. Probably it's better to specialize as early as you can but it's nice to be able to crank out a marketplace quickly in your commerce city by borrowing some hexes.

Example: My capitol has been a main production hub until railroads, now I let the city next to it work all the production tiles since capitol get no railroadbonus. Capitol is now farmland+Great Persons en masse.

Settle first where AI is likely to, it's a race, expand from outwards to inwards. And a balance as they get pissed if you are too close but then it seems they get pissed either way. And don't settle too far away, you need to be able to defend and the road should not cost too much. Alternatively you build another city inbetween before building roads but that leaves proxy city vulnerable for attack due to logistics issues.