Questions after first few games of civ

[Prospero]

Hello. I’m completely new to the civilization series, but the latest version as got me hooked for sure. I’ve played a couple games, mucking about and starting over when things go wrong, and I’m getting the hang of it. I’m currently playing on warlord on a standard map, normal time. I have some questions, naturally

- War hardly seems a viable means for victory. It takes a very long time to conquer another civilization. I can usually take a city or two, and then it’s a standoff. Or should I use peacy treaties and do it in stages ? Also, how does war influence your score ? It seems to me every time I am at war my score is plummeting, even when I’m winning it.
- A cultural victory seems very hard to achieve too. In my current game I have 8 cities, three of which are highly productive ones. I have the industrious trait, so I built almost all the wonders, and my main cultural city is producing a little more then 100 culture per turn. That’s with hermitage and a couple artists and great person specialists. The year is already 1850, and even with my best cultural city I would still need 300 turns to reach 5000 culture. What am I doing wrong ? I’m giving all wonders and cultural buildings priority and I have a good production rate, so I build them pretty fast.
- As far as a score victory would go, it seems there’s always some civ that’s out of my reach that’s ahead in the score lead. Since a long-term war usually plummets my score and the other civ is out of reach, I don’t see a way to thwart them What are my options to halt another civ’s advance ? I’m simply thinking of switching my cities to tech and going for the space victory. I think I’m well ahead in the tech race, since the other civs won’t stop asking me for gifts and trying to cut me lousy tech trades . But then I don’t know if I’ll make it before 2050…

 

[LeSphinx]

Prospero, welcome to the civ world!!


- War are less easy than previous civ games. But I'm not a warmonger so maybe warmonger will tells you that is still easy. The war does not directly influence your score. But as you conquered more cities, the population of this cities and the new land acquired directly influence the score.
- cultural victory is more easy for me as I'm a culturemonger!!! 100 culture/turn is not enought to achieve a cultural victory. depending of the date but you can have around 800 culture / turn for your main cities...

have a look at this tread :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138647

LeSphinx

 

[Gufnork]

Sounds to me like you need to practice your warring skills. The rest should follow. I think you don't have enough troops before you go to war. You need a big enough army to know you'll take the first two cities and let reinforcements handle the rest. Set your entire empire, except possibly your newest cities, on warproduction. Barracks in each city is a must, Theocracy and Vassalage preferrable during the production phase of the war. Switch back to infrastructure production once you think you have enough troops to achieve your objective, even if the war isn't over. You must also learn which troops to train when, the AI is fairly uncreative when it comes to defense so you'll learn in time.

My score tends to skyrocket in wartime as I quickly expand my empire. I do fall behind technologically, so too extended wars could be very hurtful. But usually I have enough time to turn the conquered cities productive and start catching up.

 

[ÆnigmÆffect]

(these are from single player experiences, as I'm not big on multiplayer)

On war:
I'm not a warmonger, but can wage a war when it's necessary (I find wars take too long/tedious. However, with the new promotion system, it's gotten more interesting

The first and foremost before going to war: understand the reason(s) for going to war. Is it to get crucial resources? To get more land? To cripple the opponent? Or to eliminate the the opponent? Or did your opponent declare on you, and you just need to quickly defend properly?

For getting crucial resources/grab a bit more land, focus on a quick and sharp attack. As long as your overall army is decent, you should be able to make peace in a couple of turns.

For crippling an opponent, try to get units with 2 movements, so that you can move and pillage. Pillaging important resources can cripple the opponent, and general pillaging a town down to nothing will net you 60-100 gold or so.

Before getting into outright war, let's quickly go over general military strategies and tactics. Gufnork's advice is very sound. If you're going to go to war, you need to commit. That means that most/all of your cities should be producing military units, and pick civics that help. First off, make sure the cities producing units have barracks first before anything (unless you're extremely pressed, eg. the computer declared). Produce a good base of units before declaring war. How many units depend on the purpose, as discussed above.

If taking over cities: siege units are very, very useful. They should be used before attacking a city outright, so that you bring down the city defenses first. Then, if your units are weaker, *attack* with the siege units so that they do collateral damage (pretty much suicide units), then the rest of the units will have an easier time. (here's a thread explaining combat strength and win ratios: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137615)

When producing units, take a look at what the opponent has, and build units to counteract. Generally, you want some city attackers (swordsmen, macemen, to riflemen and tanks later on). Mounted units are also useful, since they can retreat and have higher movement. These usually are fairly strong offensive units, since they are geared for offense. Being immune to first strike is important.

If you're going to keep the cities, remember to bring some defensive units to put in the town. My forces usually includes 10-20% archers, particulary when I'm "cleaning up" the civ.

Other small, but perhaps overlooked points: when attacking, almost always use full strength units. Heal them up before you attack. Having 1 medic promoted unit in a stack makes a world of difference. What I do is that after I take over a city, I leave all the injured units in town to heal, while the rest of the force goes for another city. By the time that's done, the healed units can join up.

If you're going to wipe out another civ, while it's important to continuously pump out units with most/all your cities, there's also a time to take a break (go for peace for a 10 turns to recuperate). If you're steamrolling the opponent, you may have needed to lower your science slider. If the opponent civ has technologies you don't have, if you're strong, when you ask for peace, remember to ask them to toss in some techs. They may or may not agree. If they don't, move towards the next city. They will often change their mind. If not, kill them

Lastly, if the AI declares war on you, it could be a good opportunity to not only defend, but also make some gains (find a reason to hurt them in the process).

 

[Prospero]

Hm, I have indeed been attacking with just enough units to capture the enemy cities, but then my own cities are relatively undefended. Guess I'll try a bit more 'convincing' approach tonight. I've always been afraid of switching entirely to military production though, since I don't want to fall behind in research or wonders. Also, units that are built in cities far away from the front tend to arrive late and not be of use. Except maybe for reinforcing captured cities that aren't capable of producing yet... hm.. decisions, decisions.. I just love this game

Tsjee, lots of good tips there, enigm, thanks a lot. I'll give it a go tonight and keep you posted.

 

[ÆnigmÆffect]

On culture:

I originally thought that a culture win is pretty impossible, until I started looking at it more closely (and browsing the forums )

There seems to be a couple of main parts/strategies, and I'll try to go over them.

The base foundation needed for any culture win are the "cathedrals". One of these are the buildings can be built for every 3 temples that you have of the religion. Thus, you basically need at least 9 cities so that all 3 of your main cities can get as many cathedrals as possible.

The reason why these buildings are important: each gives a +50% culture rate. So if your base culture is +20, having 2 of these buildings will make you +40.

Basically, any building that gives a +% modifiers are very, very important.

Gunning for free speech early is important, since that gives all cities +100% culture.

The two main paths:
One, is the financial path. Since you can adjust your culture slider, that means the more finance you make, the more culture you'll produce when you crank that up. The strategy is basically to development towns normally, with some cities focusing on commerce. When you get to a point where you can see which 3 cities are clearly the most productive, THEN build cathedral-type buildings in those cities, then crank the culture slider all the way up. Since you're going for a culture win, it's okay if your science is at 0%. At this point, you generally should be able to output 500+ culture in each of the towns (if not more), and if you have over 100 turns left, you'll be fine.

Another strategy (which can be somewhat incorporated into any culture strategy), is to have some other cities produce tons of great artists. These cities need to be food-rich, so that you can slap as many artists there as possible. There's a thread that talks about this, and basically, one poster said that doing this, he can get 10-14 great artists, all waiting to be dropped on the 3 cities when necessary. Of course, throughout this time, the 3 towns will need to be producing decent culture, which includes playing with the culture slider. The cities producing the artists may or may not be the core towns. These may be the core towns, since having so many specialist artists to produce great people will increase your cultuer per turn for these towns. Or these could be other towns whose sole purpose is to feed the main towns.

There's more nuances and personal preference for strategy (such as whether devoting which towns are the culture towns from the get go, or doing it later via the commerce route). The important thing is to understand how the game works, and which aspects you need to control to get the culture needed. On wonders, some say they're important, some say they're not. It all depends on the strategy you're going for. And no matter the path, at the end, your culture slider WILL be ~100% to make that push (devoting everything to the victory condition at hand).

For my first culture win, I devoted cities to the cause right away, so I used my great artists as super artists (instead of culture bomb). I didn't think as much about how much commerce the cities will provide, but I ended up with decent amount of commerce. I gunned for lots of wonders, and few great artists. By the end of the game, cranking the slider all the way up, the core cities were producing 1k+ culture each. And since cathedrals take a long time to build, I also determined which cities will build what first, and managed it so that they all reached 50K at roughly the same time (like 3 turns apart).

Oh lastly, once the cities have committed to be the main cities, these should always be building some type of culture building, or necessities (health/happiness when necessary), and never diverge their purpose. When not doing anything, these should just produce "culture".

 

[Prospero]

Thanks a bundle, Enigm.

 

[hanterp]

ÆnigmÆffect, about this:

Since you're going for a culture win, it's okay if your science is at 0%

I know, I rip it out of context
If you put science at 0%, don't you fall behind in inventing important techs you need to defend your cities? I mean, what's culture worth if an atomic bomb is aimed at a culture which is centuries behind in technology?

I am not even an average player and maybe my question shows that...

 

[Astax]

As a Warmongerer, I can tell you war rules. It is not easy and that's good. What some of you fail to see is there is more than one kind of war. Yeah you may want to war to take the otehr civilization, that's good, but those wars tend to be long and costly. Usually I war to keep the AI on defenssive and slow down his growth. Those wars dont take huge army, just small amout of units adept at pillaging and harassing. When at war the AI will almsot never let his workers out of the city, this alone slows him down by a lot!

I've warred because I wanted some money.
I've warred because I had no religion so I stole a holy city.
I've warred to capture workers.
I've warred because I wanted to chop trees in enemy territory.
I've warred because I wanted to place a city somewhere and there wasnt enough space between my city and the AI city, so I would raze his.
And most important, I've warred because it's fun!

 

[ÆnigmÆffect]

hanterp: On science at 0%:

Well, I guess I generalized a bit. The main answer: it all depends.

If you're way ahead in tech, being at 0% for 50 turns will put you behind by the end, but your units should still be able to defend okay.

If you're behind, then you have to look at the overall status: do you have decent military (size wise, not necessarily tech wise)? How's your relations with others? If everyone hates you, then there's a good chance they'll war with you. If it's decent, then you may be able to risk having crappier tech units.

A semi "rule of thumb": a lot of people will get the tech that gives you Infantry (industrialization?), then stop after that. This is because infantry is still a decent unit later on, as long as you have a bunch of them.

I haven't encountered a game where someone nuked me yet, so I don't know what the best approach is.

Mainly, when I say "culture at 100%", that's when the situation is right, and you're making your final push. If you do it way too early, obviously you can get screwed.

 

[Steelsmith]

War is definitely a viable strategy for victory! I made a long reply here, but I moved it to another thread to invite specific comments about warmongering: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3359842#post3359842

 

[Volstag]

War hardly seems a viable means for victory. It takes a very long time to conquer another civilization. I can usually take a city or two, and then it’s a standoff. Or should I use peacy treaties and do it in stages ?

This is, largely, personal preference. Your speed of conquest, generally speaking, is measured against your need for infrastructure, commerce and research. In a nutshell, a focused effort on military aggrandizement is going to leave you hurting in other areas. If you're mostly worried about capturing cities, simply bury them under siege pieces.

Final note on war: don't half-ass military conflicts. If you can arrange it, don't go to war until you have the units, and plan, to quickly achieve your objectives.

Also, how does war influence your score ? It seems to me every time I am at war my score is plummeting, even when I’m winning it.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I don't think military conquest, or raw size of army has much influence on your overall score. I could be wrong, of course.

A cultural victory seems very hard to achieve too.

Cultural victories are more difficult in the fact that you really have to plan for them right at the beginning of the game. It's not something you can just "jump into" at any point.

As far as a score victory would go, it seems there’s always some civ that’s out of my reach that’s ahead in the score lead. Since a long-term war usually plummets my score and the other civ is out of reach, I don’t see a way to thwart them What are my options to halt another civ’s advance ?

There's various methods of varying degrees of efficacy. Briefly:
1) Arrange trade embargos
2) Arrange military alliances
3) Foster good relations with enemies of your enemy
4) Espionage
5) Limited objective wars wherein your entire goal is to pillage him back to the stone age.
6) Gifting/trading techs, units, resources to civs you can reasonably expect to antagonize your opponent.

You just have to hope you don't create a new monster, or give your opponent an excuse to brutalize you and your "friends".

I’m simply thinking of switching my cities to tech and going for the space victory.

The space-race victory makes a convenient choice. In fact, I find it's always my "go to" victory condition when everything else fails. All you need is good production, and a respectable research.

 

[meink]

Don't get caught up on wonders. They take a lot of resources that could be otherwise spent, and can quite easily be wasted if the AI beats you. Don't build them just for the sake of building a wonder - like everything else, have a good reason for doing so.