Share your tricks (as opposed to general strategy)

[YourHarry]

Did a quick search, didn't find a similar thread (to my surprise). My guess is that I just suck at searching.

I thought it would be neat to share some tricks we can employ during the game (as opposed to general strategy).

Here are a few:

1. Negotiating with AI. Probably because of rounding issue, selling strategic resources 1 at a time could net you greater gold per turn. For example, AI may buy lump sum of 5 iron for 7 gold per turn. But if you sell 1 iron at a time, often he will give you 2 gpt. And he will buy multiple.

2. Peace Treaty is kinda like a stock market: for no apparent reason (as far as I can tell), the price the AI is willing to pay for peace treaty fluctuates turn to turn. On one turn he is demanding one of my cities. Next, he is willing to pay me 20 gpt. Thus, it's useful to check at each turn, what he's willing to give you.

Also, sometimes pillaging his luxury resources immediately before peace treaty will lower his net gpt. Downside of this is that, he usually offers less gold.

In contrast, killing off his units immediately before peace treaty is a good idea - as it lowers his maintenance cost and his gpt.

3. Back to the future. Or the past. Getting knights in the ancient or classical era.
Ancient ruin upgrade chariot archers to knights or conquistador or camel archers.

This requires some luck however. But if you happen to be located in the corner of the map, and you find an ancient ruin in the corner on the opposite sides of other civs (or if you are just isolated by a small choke), you can usually prevent other civs from reaching the ruin. Save the ruin, wait until you build a chariot archer (available after wheel) and if you get lucky, receive a knight or equivalent. It's pretty much unstoppable. Steal bunch of workers, pillage every enemy tiles, demand tributes for CS.

Alternatively, ancient ruins on small islands reachable after optics are more often than not available. So, if you are not lucky enough to find save-able ruins, you may still get a knight in the classical era (after optics).

More to come later. Please share your tricks!

 

[S.O.T MAHak]

Some good tips you got there. Haven't thought about nr. 1.

BTW I made a similar thread 1 month ago: Unusual tips!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=513602

 

[sendos]

1. Tradition. Many tricks can be found with tradition. Nuff said.
2. with religion, borobodur + itinerant preachers will offer a rapid spread of your religion. It is a bit strategy, a bit luck and a bit of a trick.
3. Flood your capitol or best city with food trade routes.
4. If you're on the coast, if you're using trade routes for gold, use sea trade routes instead to get more gold and keep an eye out for uncivilized coastlines next to the trade route.
5. Nuke enemy cities that contain air garrisons. You will wipe out the entire air force in that city.
6. It is usually best to get rid of your lancers by modern era. Freedom ideology is ideal for this.
7. With autocracy ideology, find a swab of CS' next to each other, grab gunboat diplomacy and park an army between the CS'. Rack up free positive influence per turn. Very ideal approach for Siam and Greece. The single army will intimidate multiple CS' at once.

 

[sam44hill]

Always start out with Drill promos [unless in a desert], beeline March. Huge force-multiplier for your military.

 

[EEE_BOY]

If possible, build artist guild and work on artists first then build write guild and work on writers, which gives the GA for 8 turns of Golden age and GW at the end to culture bomb for max effect.

Starve citizen (work all hammer tiles) if possible when producing a settler.

If playing isolated start, save all ancient ruins after turn 20, so you may get faith from them.

Also attribute to Glory, bulb the GW after entering Renaissance era for quick Secularism. Park a unit or two in front of neighbour AI's territory, which intimidate AI settler from settling towards you while your settler is on the way to settle towards AI. Surround CS with military units if the CS is at war with AI but you are not, to protect the CS and distract AI's military.

Bulb GS 8 turns after constructing all research labs and assign as many specialists as possible during that 8 turns. (standard speed).


Some other ticks are a bit exploitive:
Steal CS worker and hide nearby, heal and continue to steal CS worker until 60 turns passed.
Allow barbarians to pillage a single lux while that lux is sold to AI friend for lump sum of gold.

 

[Soffacet]

. Back to the future. Or the past. Getting knights in the ancient or classical era.
Ancient ruin upgrade chariot archers to knights or conquistador or camel archers.

My new goal is to one day plant a city with a Chariot Archer.

 

[EK834]

Those are pretty basic/old:

- Always negotiate with the AI. That OB for 1 gpt deal might seem a good deal, but with friendly AI it's not. Have them make a counter proposal and depending on relations they might give you a reduction (as much as half the cost as a gold sum).

- The AI often don't understand how far you're willing to go to get something, especially with gpt. If they refuse any deal, keep raising the offer in gpt, there's often a point we're they'll accept.

- If you need a huge sum fast to buy units to survive or a building, you can borrow the sum from a friend: propose the equivalent in gpt for the sum you want. Avoid war to prevent turning this into an exploit.

- When you want to pass unpopular measures in the World Congress (especially World Religion and World Ideology) and the AI won't sell its votes to you or ask for more than you're willing to pay, they are usually far more amenable to negotiate their vote for the second proposal. You don't get the Yea vote for your proposal, but you make sure the AI will vote on the second one instead, which often is a good as getting their Yeas.

- When you really want an Ideology (You're Venice going for a SV, you need Freedom to buy spaceship parts) and foresee Influence troubles ahead, it's a good strategy to beeline radio and propose you ideology as World Ideology ASAP. You can start immediately to make the round with diplomats, starting by buying the votes of the civs most likely to pick an Ideology before the session. If you're refused, try to divert the votes on proposal #2 instead. An existing WI greatly influences the choice of ideology the AI will make. Beware of one thing: if the World passes into a new era before the session, the # of core votes will increase. These new core votes won't go to you automatically if you bought the core votes in the previous era, you need to buy the new ones too or account for the fact the AI will have 1-2 extra votes to do with as they please.

- Selling OB to Civs from you own ideology can be beneficial if by letting them gain a level of influence over you you remove pressure from other ideologies. As a bonus they might themselves suffer from pressure while you, protected by them, don't. Don't renew the deal and avoid sending TR to them once the level of influence is reached.

- A Venice/Austria strategy: CS can conquer other cities. If they're your allies, you can help them conquer one or two during a war, by gifting units and helping them by destroying a city's defenses for them. Have the gold sum to marry the CS or the MoV ready: you will no only get the CS but also all the other cities it possesses.

 

[Tabarnak]

-Don't build early wonders

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Bribe the warmonger AI you want to fight to attack your friends before attacking him to mitigate warmonger diplo penalty.

 

[peddroelm]

always build a trireme before your first workboat lest you want it pillaged by barbs ..

 

[Arbooz]

always build a trireme before your first workboat lest you want it pillaged by barbs ..

AFAIK barbs cannot pillage workboats

 

[Johan^^]

My best trick to advancing to deity is DONT BE GREEDY

So i.e. that sweet city location thats 12 tiles away from your Capital with some juicy NW but impossible to defend / reinforce. Dont settle it.

 

[Smote]

Vs ai: try to time oracle completion with Rennaissance era for early start on rationalism/secularism

 

[Memoryjar]

Saw AI build Oracle T 64.

 

[mclericp]

Battleships
frigates

nuff said

 

[Amarr Emperor]

AFAIK barbs cannot pillage workboats

They can if you're playing anything but settler

 

[Conspirator]

You can allow enemy cities time to heal to allow your archers to get +1 Range and 2x Attack bonuses by attacking, retreating, healing and repeat. Very powerful.

 

[Cpt Oblivious]

The one I think gets overlooked a lot:

Having a spy in a city lets you view their entire city screen. If you're planning an invasion, look to see what they've built (not just wonders, but science/gold/culture buildings) to help you cherry pick which city you want beforehand, so you don't waste your time/units/warmonger penalty on cities that are only good for burning (unless burning them was the plan in the first place.) It also lets you have territory vision for the city, so for example if you see a war break out away from you, placing a spy in a frontlines city can let you see what kind of forces are being brought by attacker and defender alike, so you can plan for either civ's forces. [i.e. "Ottomans just attacked Ethiopia... but are they bringing in a bunch of pikemen and knights, or do they have cannons and Janissaries to go up against city defenses?"]

Being forewarned is being four-armed, or something like that.

 

[krc]

This just happened to me again, so maybe if I put a tip here I'll remember to watch for it.

The situation: an AI who is behind in tech signs a DoF with you and comes back the next turn to ask for an RA. You agree, and pay the extra gold and GPT because he is an era behind. You close the trade screen and immediately see the notification: your RA partner has just entered the same era that you are in!

The tip: Say no to the RA request when it comes like this. Go back to them on your turn and then sign the RA.

 

[budweiser]

Preserve a ruins and pop it after turn 20 for a chance at faith.