Starting Civ 5

[solidsneek]

Hi guys,

I have had CIV on steam for a while now and never really given it a go.

I am going to try and give it a go this weekend and get in to any tips for a beginner and am I right in thinking this is the best CIV to play?

Thanks guys!

 

[Walter R]

Welcome to the Forum.

Tips:
Science is king, maximise your output.
Play on a low level for the first few games to get a feel for the game, but don't stay at low level after that

Best Civ? That's the subject of many a post - you decide!

 

[meatpardle]

am I right in thinking this is the best CIV to play?

Dangerous question round these parts!

Basic advice would be to play on the easiest level with tutorial on, standard speed and size map. Don't try too much too soon.

Have a look here for reference http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/, don't try and read it all up front but every time you uncover something you arenlt sure about its a good reference guide.

 

[solidsneek]

Cheers for the advice guys. Will look at some strategies can't wait to start playing again.

 

[KevinLandwaster]

Some essential tips:

1.Cultural victory is the easiest, because you don't have to conquer anything, and you can probably do it with just your capital. So, it might be good to start out on a small map and do a culture victory just to learn the mechanics of the game.

2.You will, however, be attacked, but the AI sucks at military tactics. Even if they come at you with 10 units, all you have to do is focus on taking out one unit at a time. Without a melee unit, it's impossible to capture a city, so you might want to focus on taking those out first. They will give up pretty soon and beg you for a peace treaty (its funny, actually). You may want to at least build walls in some of your cities in the beginning if someone like Attila is at your doorstep.

3.To outpace the other civilizations, focus on science. Science gives you stronger military units and more buildings to enhance your empire. The base science output comes from population, so food is really important in the beginning. And everyone will tell you, build the national wonder, "national college" as soon as possible. You need a library in every city as a prerequisite to build national college.

4.Happiness is a big deal in this game. You need to make sure you have luxury resources to create happiness, otherwise when your population grows you will get into a state of "unhappiness" which is extremely detrimental to your progress. Happiness is also acquired from other sources such as social policies, religious beliefs and city state allies (mercantile).

5.Beginners usually don't understand how the mechanics works with specialists and citizens. If you build farms and other tile improvements, you don't get any of the resources unless it's being worked by a citizen. You can see where your citizens are working by clicking on your city and expanding the manual citizen control menu. Some of the buildings have slots for specialists. You get big boosts in science, culture, etc from citizens that are placed in those slots (in which case, they are called "specialists")

6.Don't build a monument or an aqueduct, because you get them for free from the tradition social policy tree. Most people max out the tradition tree first for most victory types.

 

[Sclb]

I'm pretty sure you meant science victory is the easiest, not cultural. Cultural victory requires good understanding of tourism and other concepts.

 

[claudiupb]

One tip: if you play the tutorial remember you can't save the game. The first time I played civ I started the tutorial, played for several hours, and was really fond of that game but there was no way I could continue it. Play the tutorial until you get the basics, and then start a settler/chieftain game that goes until info era. After that take it easy and explore each aspect of the game, continuing to increase the difficulty if you feel you can go further. Try a science win, then a domination one, etc. Regarding the civ to play I would recommend to set it random for now.

 

[KevinLandwaster]

I'm pretty sure you meant science victory is the easiest, not cultural. Cultural victory requires good understanding of tourism and other concepts.

For me, culture was easier. For science you have to make sure you have a lot of production capacity to build those spaceship parts and if you don't plan right, it will take a long time to collect them all in one place and assemble the ship. I didn't know anything about tourism when I won culture vic. On the other hand, when I won science victories I didn't use great engineers and great scientists, so maybe it's pretty easy that way. They're both pretty easy because you don't need to conquer anything.

 

[Puhi]

I would say science is simpler than culture. Is one easier than the other? I'd say for a beginner, at least, science is potentially easier. If you are trying for a culture win and there is one civ with tons of culture, it can be a bit of a pain.

For a first-timer, I would recommend to try for a science victory first, as learning how to develop science is very fundamental. Start at a nice low level. But if you take the time to read up and learn how the game operates, I think you'll find you will be able to player on emperor and higher relatively quickly.

 

[Sclb]

Well it is natural to start from science perspective and science victory is the obvious end goal of that. It is important to learn how to maximize science and it also develops good habits. One of the thing you'll need to do is to manually assign specialists since the AI is horrible at managing that automatically.

 

[Lay_Lay]

Been playing since day one and still have not won a culture victory.
Low level play is about building wonders. You win almost simply because you built most of the wonders.
The highest level of play is about diplomacy mechanics manipulation, paying civs to fight other civs, and other similar nonsensical things.
The middle ground is the sweet spot - enough gimmicky nonsense to satisfy, but not too much, and a few wonders or a religion perhaps.
Level 6-7 (monarch-immortal) is the sweet spot

 

[darkskies]

Reminds when I first played I didn't yet understand the ways you could ally with a city-state so I kept concurring them to get needed resources (well it did teach me good battle skills). A lot of fun for me was pushing my levels higher and higher and learning from the defeats (I hate losing but you can learn a lot and push your knowledge/skills faster).

 

[claudiupb]

On lower levels culture victory is probably the easiest. I remember when I started I got a culture victory by accident.

 

[meatpardle]

SV is easier to plan put and follow, because you'll be doing most of it anyway just by researching tech.

I have also had accidental culture victories, but scientific is the most basic to understand and aim for as a first-time player.

 

[KevinLandwaster]

I have to ammend what I said. The concepts and mechanics involved in culture victory are more deep and complicated than the science victory. The Domination victory is probably the simplest to implement, but you have to be good at planning your military strategy and carting your armies around the map, etc. I think, on second thought, science would be the easiest victory. Diplomatic would be the second easiest and cultural may be the 3rd. I wouldn't go for a domination victory unless getting at least one or two other victories. You are likely to end up winning a time victory in a lot of cases if you don't know how to speed through the tech tree and use great people.

As far as which version of Civilization to play, some people say Civ iv was a better game in terms of balance and mechanics, but I think Civ V is a better experience in terms of immersion, depth and production value. If you are a real purist for strategy and combat, maybe you would rather play Civ IV, but I wouldn't recommend it in general.

 

[liv]

I also think that domination is probably easiest for an absolute beginner (except time?) - especially if one starts on low difficulties. It is the most intuitive to understand perhaps.

 

[beetle]

SV is easier to plan put and follow, because you'll be doing most of it anyway just by researching tech.
I have also had accidental culture victories, but scientific is the most basic to understand and aim for as a first-time player.

I have to agree with this, it is very insightful. SV feels very satisfying and complete because you have to uncover so much of the tech tree, even when playing at a lower difficulty level.

CV is pretty much a surprise the first time it happens! When playing at lower difficulty levels, CV can be opaque even when you are aiming for it!

SV is also good as a baseline as you adjust the difficulty level to find what is challenging without being too easy.