Trickster7135
Prince
Played through a couple of games on standard size/speed with Greeks and India. Here's some notes I've come up with to help myself and anyone else when adjusting to this new civ:
1. Make city-states your friends. Obviously Greeks have a better time of this, but even India did a fine job. The Indian bonus, which encourages not rexing, is well suited to making friends with city-states and using them as national borders against other civs. Additionally, keeping city-states in good graces becomes very easy once you get to Patronage social policies, and is very lucrative regardless of your desired path to victory. Even cultured city-states make great allies for warmongers, as there is plenty of military bonus social polices you can invest in.
2. Standard speed games are slower than they were in civ4, its more like playing on epic. Military units in general take longer to produce, compared to buildings, than in civ4.
3. Gold is everything in this game. With enough gold, you can buy a worker, monument, temple, ect for a new city and not worry that it has no production. In fact, you can ignore production almost completely, food and gold are so much better. Farm those river hills, only bother with mines on hills not near a water source. Use gold to buy buildings, buy military, buy city-states, buy land. Everything but techs and improvements can be bought in this game.
4. Going in line with #3, farm every riverside plot. Irrigation doesn't exist anymore, but Civil Service tech now just gives +1 food on riverside farms. And since now population is what determines science rate, getting huge populations is even more important than in civ4. Even if there was a slavery-like social policy, whipping citizens would be horrible in this game.
5. On a standard sized map, you may only be able to found three or four total cities in good locations and distances from each other before you run out of room. Don't be tempted to conquer the weak city-states! Become friends and allies, then use them to station your troops and start taking out a real civ nearby.
6. If you're pursuing a peaceful strategy, you don't need to worry about expanding your empire. The three or four cities you can found at the start of the game is all you need. Building culture for social policies or even a cultural victory is made more difficult for every city to have, as the needed culture is increased for each city you have.
7. Barbarians are a real force in this game. Its like playing with raging barbarians and barbarian city challenge, and they just keep poping up. Taking the first part of the tradition social policy before you build any other policy would be a good idea. Barbarians will be a problem into the middle ages, and taking them out is a great way to get on good terms with city-states. Releasing captured workers from other civs is a great way to get on good terms.
8. If you are pursing a military strategy, don't just annex other civs cities, its not worth the trouble. Turn them into puppet states.
9. Land will be unclaimed for most of the game. Build cities by resources, as a city not next to any is generally not worth the trouble. Only buy land if you need a critical resource like iron or horses, or your city culture is not expanding the borders fast enough for your population growth.
10. Every building has a gold per turn maintenance. Building every building in every city is foolish. Designate one city your military production city (probably the only one you would focus on building mines instead of trading posts), and only build military buildings there. Only build happiness buildings as they are needed or will be needed soon (when you have 5 or less happiness, basically). I suggest only building culture and food buildings in every city. The only maintenance free buildings are the gold producing once (market, bank, ect), so if you have nothing worth building, build those even if the city only makes 5 gold a turn.
11. You need much fewer military units compared to civ4. Since there is no unit stacking, you can't even effectively attack a city with more than 6 or so units (3 melee, 3 ranged). Usually, two or three horsemen are all you need in the classical era, and having them pillage improvements is a fantastic source of income (I've gotten up to 30 gold just from a farm, in the middle ages). Also, there are no free units anymore, you pay in gold for every unit you have.
That's all I got for now, if anyone wants to add their own, feel free! I certainly haven't got a full grasp on this game yet, and I doubt anyone has either.
1. Make city-states your friends. Obviously Greeks have a better time of this, but even India did a fine job. The Indian bonus, which encourages not rexing, is well suited to making friends with city-states and using them as national borders against other civs. Additionally, keeping city-states in good graces becomes very easy once you get to Patronage social policies, and is very lucrative regardless of your desired path to victory. Even cultured city-states make great allies for warmongers, as there is plenty of military bonus social polices you can invest in.
2. Standard speed games are slower than they were in civ4, its more like playing on epic. Military units in general take longer to produce, compared to buildings, than in civ4.
3. Gold is everything in this game. With enough gold, you can buy a worker, monument, temple, ect for a new city and not worry that it has no production. In fact, you can ignore production almost completely, food and gold are so much better. Farm those river hills, only bother with mines on hills not near a water source. Use gold to buy buildings, buy military, buy city-states, buy land. Everything but techs and improvements can be bought in this game.
4. Going in line with #3, farm every riverside plot. Irrigation doesn't exist anymore, but Civil Service tech now just gives +1 food on riverside farms. And since now population is what determines science rate, getting huge populations is even more important than in civ4. Even if there was a slavery-like social policy, whipping citizens would be horrible in this game.
5. On a standard sized map, you may only be able to found three or four total cities in good locations and distances from each other before you run out of room. Don't be tempted to conquer the weak city-states! Become friends and allies, then use them to station your troops and start taking out a real civ nearby.
6. If you're pursuing a peaceful strategy, you don't need to worry about expanding your empire. The three or four cities you can found at the start of the game is all you need. Building culture for social policies or even a cultural victory is made more difficult for every city to have, as the needed culture is increased for each city you have.
7. Barbarians are a real force in this game. Its like playing with raging barbarians and barbarian city challenge, and they just keep poping up. Taking the first part of the tradition social policy before you build any other policy would be a good idea. Barbarians will be a problem into the middle ages, and taking them out is a great way to get on good terms with city-states. Releasing captured workers from other civs is a great way to get on good terms.
8. If you are pursing a military strategy, don't just annex other civs cities, its not worth the trouble. Turn them into puppet states.
9. Land will be unclaimed for most of the game. Build cities by resources, as a city not next to any is generally not worth the trouble. Only buy land if you need a critical resource like iron or horses, or your city culture is not expanding the borders fast enough for your population growth.
10. Every building has a gold per turn maintenance. Building every building in every city is foolish. Designate one city your military production city (probably the only one you would focus on building mines instead of trading posts), and only build military buildings there. Only build happiness buildings as they are needed or will be needed soon (when you have 5 or less happiness, basically). I suggest only building culture and food buildings in every city. The only maintenance free buildings are the gold producing once (market, bank, ect), so if you have nothing worth building, build those even if the city only makes 5 gold a turn.
11. You need much fewer military units compared to civ4. Since there is no unit stacking, you can't even effectively attack a city with more than 6 or so units (3 melee, 3 ranged). Usually, two or three horsemen are all you need in the classical era, and having them pillage improvements is a fantastic source of income (I've gotten up to 30 gold just from a farm, in the middle ages). Also, there are no free units anymore, you pay in gold for every unit you have.
That's all I got for now, if anyone wants to add their own, feel free! I certainly haven't got a full grasp on this game yet, and I doubt anyone has either.
