Tactics for various playstyles

[JUNK de LUXE]

Hello

First of all this "mod" looks amazing and on paper it seems like it's just what I want. But coming from Civ4 and Better Bat AI mod I can't seem to understand what kind of strategies to go for in Civ5 and CBP.

Civ4 w. Better Bat AI highly encouraged specialist cities. A production city, a GP farm, an commerce - science city, a commerce - gold city etc.

In Civ5 w. CBP it seems (at least in the first few eras) that I can't specialize because my happiness will tank if my science isn't up, or my economy isn't up etc.. so I have to build all buildings in all cities... or I'm missing something fundamentally with Civ5?

So what are some top 20 key point for playing CBP? So far I'm struggling really hard even on Warlord. I'm usually (without mods) way ahead on science (because that's my usual play-style) but nothing I try seems to work in CBP. I don't mind relearning what to do.. I'd just love a few pointers as to HOW to do it.

 

[Moi Magnus]

1) Specialised cities don't work. All your cities should have the important buildings of the previous era. There is still some specialisation, because on buildings of the current era, you may choose to delay some building in some cities in order to build more militaristic buildings and build units (for examples), but at the end every city should have most of the buildings.
That's how the hapiness system work : people don't like to live in a military outpost, or on a boring and unprotected city, ...

2) You should expand more and quicker than in vanilla CivV, especially with progress and autority. In my last Deity game, I was the first player to settle a 4th city, and it help.

3) Pop is no longer the king. Culture is the king, tech is second. Pop remain important because you need a lot of pop if you want to work cultural specialists and scientific specialist. The only victory where tech is more important than culture is domination victory.
Note that scientist are still better than cultural scecialist, because they produce both culture and science (with philosophy)...
REMARK : specialist gives a lot of yiels, but consume more food than regular people, they consume approximatively one per era (Ancient = 2, Classical = 2, Medieval = 3, Rennaissance = 3, Industrial = 4, Modern = 5, Atomic = 6, Information = 8).

4) Happiness is important : you have between +10% and -30% to every gobal yields (science, gold, culture, ...) depending on that. So try to be at least a 10 happiness.

5) Don't be affraid of dark ages : In most of my progress games, I have a period where I am at zero gold, with negative GPT. In most of my autority games, I have a period where I am at -40 happiness. (I had similar issue in tradition games, but nothing come to my mind). A dark age does not mean you're losing, but be sure to research the good techs and build the good buildings in order to make it as short as possible.

6) AI will buy strategical ressource more than luxuries. So those tiles can really help your economy. And he is not completly wrong : early war without horses or medieval-industrial war without iron are very difficult to handle.

7) The shrine is good : it give faith, it cost no maintenance, and help to have a pantheon. Pantheon and religion are good. you don't need to have your own, but if you can, it help. Inquisitor are not useless in you cities : you an have a LOT of unhappiness due to religion.

8) For great people, the building (or great work) is good on little empire, but on huge empire (or at middle or late game), the instant bonus will be better (A great engeneer can finish a wonder in almost 1 turn, for example). The great admiral can do a "voyage of discovery" which gives 2 luxuries, it is quite usefull.

9) The AI is better than before on battle : it try to save wounded units. So try to always kill units. If you don't, they will come back at full health.

10) There is far less no-brainer than in non-modded CivV. You can always find a situation where what I've said in previous points would be a bad advice.

 

[JUNK de LUXE]

wonderful Definitely something I can apply to my games.. now where is that like button?

But keep them coming. General tips and tricks is what I'm after.. Special tactics etc. come when I get a grasp on CBP

 

[Moi Magnus]

I've forgotten a point : there is a Strategy sub-forum if you have more questions.

 

[tu_79]

Also play to your civ advantages. Learn what every building does (some of them are very different than vanilla and some synergize). Wonders have culture requirements, so if you want any wonder, invest in culture. Social policies help greatly the tech progress, so invest in culture.

CBO tries to make every choice interesting, so you have a hard time choosing where to settle, what to build, what units produce first, what promotions to pick, sfsf. Every choice seems good, just try to adapt to your objectives and the map.

I support every advice Moi Magnus gave you. And I'll remark tuning down difficulty.

 

[crdvis16]

Don't ignore any aspect of the game.

If you ignore religion you might end up with crippling unhappiness from religious division in your cities.

If you ignore diplomacy and the world congress you might end up being the target of crippling proposals.

If you ignore culture you won't get any wonders.

If you ignore military you'll be DoW'd and conquered.

If you ignore tourism/culture you'll suffer from cripping unhappiness for other ideologies.

The list goes on and on. You really need to engage in every aspect of the game at least somewhat to succeed, typically.

 

[Qualanqui]

Try bigger, water maps on epic speed, I reckon it gives me more time to plan and react. I play on King normally and can pretty much crush it most of the time on CPB.

 

[Horvath Broncos]

I play on immortal and have realized that most of time you should have decent military and if you have coastal cities decent navy. More so than in Vanilla because bribing AIs to go war with each other is A LOT harder so keeping them busy while having really small army isn't as good tactic as in vanilla.

And make sure you have as much iron and later oil as possible.