Never played Civilization before

SacredRose

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 10, 2010
Messages
2
Hey Civilization Fanatics, just wondering if you could give a complete newb a few tips. I am a Starcraft 2 player that had just picked up this game and was wondering if I could get some tips on how to start improving. I've played through the tutorials, but I don't really understand the game much. If anyone has any tips or guides they could link me, it'd be much appreciated. :D
 
Hey Civilization Fanatics, just wondering if you could give a complete newb a few tips. I am a Starcraft 2 player that had just picked up this game and was wondering if I could get some tips on how to start improving. I've played through the tutorials, but I don't really understand the game much. If anyone has any tips or guides they could link me, it'd be much appreciated. :D

Welcome to CivFanatics! :band: [party]

At the moment, beeline for Horseback Riding and build as many horsemen as you can. Find and destroy the AI civilizations. Watch for spearmen though. The AI has no idea how to fight against horsemen. This will likely change in a patch in future as the AI may become a little smarter.

Start playing on either Settler or Chieftain difficulty to begin with as you're new. Although with the current state of the AI, you could probably play on King and have a good chance of winning easily.

Don't worry so much about keeping on great terms with the AI in diplomacy for now. Diplomacy is mostly stuffed with no real feedback from the AI as to whether they like you or not. They'll most likely declare on you for no apparant reason anyway.

Remember to station (garrison) a defender in each city you build. Sometimes a good idea to have an archer or three nearby to engage barbs or enemies with the ranged units first before your melee units step into the breach.

Also, remember to upgrade your units (and garrisoned units) as you progress through the tech tree.

Most of all, have fun!

(I'm sure there'll be many more better tips than mine from players who have played Civ V more than I have - I'm waiting mostly for the patches to the AI)
 
Difficulty setting below Prince give you advantages (like extra happiness), the ones above Prince give advantages to the AI players. Pick whatever setting you can handle, but try moving to Prince quickly so you don't get too badly spoiled by the lower difficulties.

Play with the American civilization. They are probably the weakest civilization in the game which is perfect for improving you playing skill.

Go through the tutorials one more time if there's anything that isn't entirely clear to you. There's no shame in having to learn.

Prepare for war, because sooner or later someone will want to fight. At the moment Horsemen are the best early game unit. They are countered by Spearmen, but the AI isn't capable of countering hit & run tactics. The AI is pretty bad in general, but it's most notable in combat.

Ally yourself with maritime city states, it will provide free food to all your cities. More food = more population = more science = everything better. Note however, that population growth will reduce your empire's happiness. To keep hapiness positive you'll need to build improvements on luxury resources (like gold and cotton) in your teritory, trade for luxury resoruces with AI leaders, build happiness buildings (like Coliseums and Theatres), or use certain social policies.

Strategic resources are crucial for your army. You can't build more cavalry units than you have Horses and early siege units require Iron. Build improvements on strategis resource in your teriotory to gain access to them.

Your closest neighbours are most likely to declare war on you. The AI isn't entirely random though. They hate warmongers and liars. Most of the warmonger hate comes from conquering cities. Liar hate comes from telling them that the massive force you've gathered at their borders is just passing through then using it to attack them and from breaking agreements.

Pact of cooperation means that you and the other civ are going to be friendly towards each other (accept deals, trade). Pact of secrecy against a civilization means you promise not to trade with the target civilization. Having a pact of cooperation with someone and then accepting a pact of secrecy against them is always going to lead to at least one AI leader hating you.

The main difference in aproaching turn based and real time strategy games is in the knd of thinking they encourage. An RTS requiers you to think quickly, while a TBS requires you to think things over. So when you're making decisions take your time, think things over twice if you need to. There's no rush.
 
One thing you should know about your cities, as a newbie to Civ: each population (citizen) eats 2 food. So you want to make sure you can feed all your citizens, because they will work the tiles around your city. The city tile gets worked for free, so every time you settle a city you will get your free city tile plus one more worked by your 1 citizen.

Extra food goes into a pool to generate more population, so you can work more tiles in your city radius. In Civ V, your citizens can work all tiles up to 3 hexes out from your city (maximum total of 36 tiles, plus the free city tile).

You need to build a worker for each city. This is different from a citizen; a worker is an actual unit you build and he moves around the map and can improve the tiles around your city by building farms, mines, lumbermills, and roads. Improving the tiles will get you more food, gold, or hammers depending on what you build in each tile.

There are special resource tiles on the map and you want to get as many of those in your city radius as you can. These are things like gems, gold, silver, deer, cattle, horses, iron, etc etc. Always use your worker to build improvements on these kind of tiles first, because they can give additional benefits.

There are also special resource tiles in the water/ocean (fish, whales, pearls, oil, etc). Your workers cannot improve these; you must build a work boat in one of your coastal cities and move it onto the special resource to improve these.

Also, you'll notice that only some hexes around your city are colored. This is your cultural border, and these are the only hexes you can improve with your workers. This border will grow over time as your city produces more culture, and you can also use your gold to purchase hexes one at a time. Buying land gets expensive, so mainly only buy hexes if there is a special resource that you want in that hex.

When you are ready for another city, you build a settler and send him out to a new location and settle the new city. You'll want to keep your settler safe from barbarians because he cannot fight, so you can clear the area with a scout or other military unit, or you can escort him with a fighting unit. Same with workers; if barbarians come near your workers, you'll want to move him inside a nearby city or run him out of range of the barbarian, or kill the barbarian if you have a fighting unit close enough.

These are some of the basic concepts you'll want to know since you've never played Civilization before.
 
Work your way to a defense force and an attack force. I like to have at least one defender for every other city (more on higher level of difficulties) to hold down your territory. An attack force should be at least 4, preferably 6 or 7 units. Horsemen are the best attackers early on. Archers are great early defenders against the occasional barbarian.

Make sure to check the demographics screen to see where your overall soldier strength is against the other civs. If you are too weak, you will get attacked, so don't fall too far behind in that stat.

Don't overexpand when attacking. Your happiness will crash if you take too many cities too fast. Either raze cities, or puppet them when you win one. Annex only when absolutely necessary.
 
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