Tips, tricks and Civ!

[Metzi]

This thread is here for 2 reasons;
1) To assemble a guide of tips, tricks and Civ for the viewing of New. All peoples can post any tips or stratergys to help improve our gameplay!
2) I've had way to much ice-creme and am sooooo enjoying my Willem van Oranje game that I don't want to screw it, thus the *selfish* reason for this post .

So, Metzi's Civ tips! (and tricks):

1) Every civ trait is useful! Play with different leaders/civs (or just press random) to broarden your views on all the traits (yes, protection does have it's uses )

2) An economy is still an economy. The best economy is chosen by the map. Choose the economy that will lead to victory!

3) Defeat in Civ is different from most other games, that is you learn from the experiance. Having a go (and having fun) is the key to enjoyment in this game!

4) Ask and you shall recieve! The civ fanatics community posters don't post stratergy guides to read there own text (unlike mine ). I never actully knew what a Specilist Economy was until I found this site. Just pop in once a month, it's all you need .

5) Workers and land! Want to run a good economy? You'll need workers!
Want to run a great empire? You'll need mines, cottages,farms
and the like!
Want to get those workers 'working'? You'll need land!
This demonsrates the value of REX'ing (Rapid expansion)!

TTFN, taa taa for now!

 

[Sisiutil]

The "Napoleon" rule:

Never fight a land war in Asia.

The Genghis Khan addendum:

...unless you're already in Asia to begin with. In which case, go to town. And burn it.

 

[Sydney Posada]

The Rabbit-Catching Rule - If you try to catch two rabbits at the same time... Have a concrete objective and go for it, bringing the weight of your entire empire behind it. This REALLY applies early. If you want to take out your neighbor, then focus exclusively on that. Don't try to build wonders or markets or aqueducts during the war (and even during the build-up), unless it's already won! You can ease off on this rule as your empire gets bigger, but focus focus focus early.

 

[dinner9001]

Not all traits are good. Protective is useless, because even if you do spam castles, walls and archery units (Which are poor attackers), your enemy will still just pillage you back to the dark ages.

 

[Metzi]

True protective is the worst, I have won 2 games as protective civs (churchill & charmagne) both of witch came from conquering the world and winning a U.N Victory . I think It's situational mostly, but i doub't it is a game breaker.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Drafting protective rifles or muskets is decent as the free drill 1 is nice, if protective I will probably promote nonupgraded early gunpowder units along drill so that I can move faster (they take less damage) and I only have to worry about cannons

 

[Absolute Zero]

Protective is definitely useful - it's just that it's not as useful as other traits. I'd rather have Financial cottages, Charismatic units, Philosophical GPs, Industrious Wonders, etc. in place of Protective gunpowder.

 

[Loki Strikes]

I'm liking industrious more for wonder failure gold recently

 

[dinner9001]

True protective is the worst, I have won 2 games as protective civs (churchill & charmagne) both of witch came from conquering the world and winning a U.N Victory . I think It's situational mostly, but i doub't it is a game breaker.

True, protective actually isn't useless after all because it helps late game warfare, but I still think it's one of the worst traits.

 

[Negator_UK]

The "Napoleon" rule:

Never fight a land war in Asia.

The Genghis Khan addendum:

...unless you're already in Asia to begin with. In which case, go to town. And burn it.

No, Genghis came first, Nappy and Adolf came after

The rule should read, "Never fight a land war in Asia unless you can invade in winter..."

For Genghis, the cold froze the rivers, making his invasion work better (no need for bridges).

For Nappy and Adolf the winter was something they hoped would not come - they blamed the weather, Genghis exploited it.

 

[Sisiutil]

No, Genghis came first, Nappy and Adolf came after

In Civ, Genghis and Nappy will come at you whenever they darn well please.

 

[Negator_UK]

In Civ, Genghis and Nappy will come at you whenever they darn well please.

How true ....

 

[lasombra1984]

1. Settle cities on Plain-Hills to gain an extra hammer and choose food 3, commerce 1 as your first city tile.
2. Don't attack across the river.
3. Sacrifice several siege units before attacking with your veterans
4. Don't attack Charlemagne with GW (especially hilled city longbows across the river)

 

[Manco Capac]

Here's some random tricks of mine:

1) (Beginning of the game) Under city radius, if you really want to chop forests for boosting something, try to chop in a way that it will resembles to a checkerboard (chop diagonally). Even though it is probabilistic, in that way, you have higher chance to retrieve the forest back. It could be useful for a wonder later of health.

2) Never chop a forest when outside cultural borders. You can get hammers from it , but with losses. Just wait cultural expansion. Nonetheless, you can chop outside your cultural influence if the forest is near another civ and its cultural influence. Personally, I love stealing their forests.

3)
At the beginning of the game, if you find gems without jungle on it but jungle near it within capital radius, put a unit on gem tile so as to nullify the probability of jungle expansion on that precious tile.

4)Never rely upon the blue circle for settling cities: sometimes, your personal choice could be the most effective for future projects.

5) If possible and effective, put your capitol or an early city on sugar: the capital tile will receive three foods instead of two like the flood plains. Moreover, the loss is little since the improved sugar merely gives one food and commerce. (Exception: Nonetheless, if financial and the sugar is nigh a river, ponder a bit more your choice. )You can proceed in the same way for rice if you're sure there will be no way to irriguate it later with bureaucracy.

6) In BTS, lakes are sh*t compared to rivers!

7) Without Masonry and an access to a stone or marble tile: put a mine on it. It gives you a juicy five hammers. (A good tip for those who ignore that non-worker tech)

8) Izzy is great when neighbour: She often found a religion for you and is an easy early prey. I mean in some cases, she got BW very late and everyone knows that a good early rush is when the target AI doesn't have BW for Slavery and Copper. I once find a game with Izzy not having discovered Mining yet towards 1500 BC.

9) Pacal II tends to be weak too in the early phase of the game: Rush him! He likes wonders if he has the opportunity.

That's my cookie for today; I gotta like that thread. Every single and insignificant trick could lead to great achievements: Butterfly Effect.

 

[Gr8scott]

Rule #1

If you don't know why you are doing something, don't do it.

Corollary to Rule #1

STOP at least every 10 turns and make / update your plan
(so that you know why you are doing things!)

 

[Manco Capac]

True protective is the worst, I have won 2 games as protective civs (churchill & charmagne) both of witch came from conquering the world and winning a U.N Victory . I think It's situational mostly, but i doub't it is a game breaker.

I don't think protective is always a fail, especially if you have in possession the GW. As an example, once with Toku, Joao DoWs me because I lost too many diplomatics points due to "You declared war against a friend" (Even Shaka was a friend around 3000 BC ). He brought a huge stack against my city dedicated for military production (so no cottages and so on). Normally , I would fear the worst but with Toku the aggressive protective , this is not the case. I easily built a wall and raise a stack of archers; thanks to a prolonged protective war , I got a GG (due to GW). Furthermore, by the time, he was the most backward civ in the world and when I updraded my samourais into CR3 Infantry, his longbowmen were all eaten by them. Don't forget a point: useless war is no good, no good at all for development of any civ. With lots of war, you can slow down the tech pace and protective comes handy in that situation.

 

[mariogreymist]

tip:
If you don't think they're very good traits, SPI and EXP are a lot better than you think. They are both highly versatile traits that pay off in nearly every game in which you have them, assuming you use them.

 

[Negator_UK]

If you don't think they're very good traits, SPI and EXP are a lot better than you think. They are both highly versatile traits that pay off in nearly every game in which you have them, assuming you use them.

SPI is especialliy good for learners as it makes mistakes selecting civics more forgiving.

 

[Negator_UK]

If you don't know why you are doing something, don't do it.

or maybe "if you don't know where you want to go, don't end the turn..."

 

[mariogreymist]

SPI is especialliy good for learners as it makes mistakes selecting civics more forgiving.

True. It's also something worth re-discovering if you think that's its best use The ability to swap civics frequently can be abused for both peaceful and warlike ends. For example: Build 5 different kinds of units to within 1 turn of completion, then swap for vassalage/theo only to go right back to Bureau/OR as soon as every city pops out five units with 4 bonus XP. Not to mention the ability to acquiesce to every little diplomatic demand as regards religion and civics, with minimal impact on your kingdom. At low levels, these skills won't be used. At high levels, they are enough to win an otherwise very losable game.