WoundedKnight
Warlord
- Joined
- May 28, 2002
- Messages
- 253
I will expand this guide progressively as time allows over the next few weeks.
LEARN THE RULES
The best-spent two hours for my CIV strategy skills was spent pouring over the civilopedia to understand the rules, the tech trees, improvements, units, etc. It's much easier to do well if you have a clear strategy and know where you want to go. For example, some techs offer bonuses to the first discoverer: a free great person, a free great tech, or starting a religion. Obviously these techs are generally a priority to get first, while others with benefits that are not time-sensitive can wait.
CIV SELECTION
The decision as to which civilization to play as is an individual one. Traits have various strengths and weaknesses:
Industrious: A great trait, as the wonders you get with +50% build speed can duplicate many other civ traits. Half-price forges are great also because they increase your productivity, and for non-industrious civs they are quite expensive.
Philosophical: Fabulous at +100% GP, but the problem is that it is hard to generate GP without wonders, and philosophical nations are likely to lose the wonder race. I prefer industrious, as the philosophical bonus can be more than duplicated with religious civics (Pacificm - +100% GP rate) and the national epic (+100% GP in the city of your choice). You can't have industrious and philosophical together. Industrious is probably better in the early game when you and your rivals have relative technologic parity, while philosophical really takes off in the late game when you are ahead technologically and don't have to sweat too much about a few extra turns in the wonder race.
Financial: Also one of my favorites. Once you get cottages and watermills working, this will gain you +1 extra gold for almost every being worked in your city radius. This is a huge advantage and allows me to stay at 90-100% tech funding from the middle ages onward even with expensive civics, a large army, and a large empire.
Expansive: Not bad, the health is nice, but I find that happiness is much more limiting than health in the early game, although it may be more useful on very high difficulty levels. Cheap granaries while also nice are of dubious value as granaries don't cost many hammers anyway.
Aggressive: A great trait for the warmonger. While experienc can be given by buildings, civics, and wonders, a free extra promotion is great -- especially for barracks-trained units with a couple of levels to boot. More and more experience is required to get more bonuses (2/5/10/17/etc), and so having a free promotion that doesn't set you back at all in the XP quest is good. Since the promotions become more and more powerful the higher in level you go (+20% city attack, +25%, +30% with an extra +10% vs gunpowder units, etc...cumulative!!!), having an extra promotion can result in a huge amount of extra military power, especially if you have planned well to take advantage of other sources of experience.
Spiritual: One of the weakest traits IMO. No anarchy, while nice, is of little benefit as I only chance civics 5-6 times in a game. Cheap temples? Temples are cheap anyway and have fewer benefits than many other buildings.
Creative: +2 culture has significant benefits in the early game, but few in the late game when cities have more culture than they know what to do with. How many times have I conquered a city only to have it flip to a closely adjacent neighbor? How many times have I built cultural improvement (theater, library, etc.) in a conquered city for the exclusive purpose of generating culture (and, sometimes failed), when a creative civ would not have had to worry at all? The automatic expanding cultural radius can be very valuable in expanding in the early game and blocking off large amounts of territory for your later development. While cultural's benefits are mainly in the early game, the benefits can be substantial. I prefer to get industrious instead and build stonehenge for your early culture (although this expires -- soon -- with calender), the benefit of creative is still significant.
Organized: Perhaps the worst trait of all. Only gives a bonus when you have expensive civics, and most of the good civics have little upkeep anyway. Get financial instead; you will be many times ahead economically. Lighthouse and courthouse are the real benefits of organized IMO, but still weak ones.
My favorites are Chinese (Qin Shi Huang) - Industrious/Financial, and English (Victoria) - Philosophical/Financial.
LEVERAGE YOUR STRENGTHS
CIV IMPROVEMENTS
My general strategy for improvements is:
Build resource-specific improvements (plantations, farms, winery, etc.) on specific resources only
Build mines on hills
Build watermills near rivers
Build cottages on all other spots
Clear jungles ASAP
Clear forests late -- generally only in middle ages after I have watermills in place that can add productivity to replace forests
Tech upgrade bonuses make cottages (lots of money, some food) and watermills (+2 production and other bonuses) very powerful. Cottages take time to develop into towns, so they should be placed early. Putting down farms early and deciding to switch them over to cottages late loses much time. Generally, I never build windmills, farms, or plantations at all, except on specific resources that require them. And I try to make a priority of getting the techs that provide increased productivity, food, or income to my terrain improvements (cottages, watermills, etc.)
LEVERAGE YOUR ADVANTAGES
It's important to make the most out of your advantages by drawing upon the synergy of civ traits, civics, improvements, and buildings and wonders. For example, it would be silly to get the aggressive civ trait and fail to build barracks. Synergy can be very powerful when you combine substantial bonuses in the same area from multiple different sources. Aggressive + barracks + pentagon + theocracy, + West Point and Heroic Epic in same city = megapowerful national military (come to think of it, it is still extremely powerful even *without* the aggressive trait or theology -- there are better traits and civics IMO). Philosophical + Pacifism + National Epic = 300% great people points, with 400% in the city with the national epic. And so forth.
It is also important to try to compensate for your disadvantages. For example, if I am not playing an expansive civ (or even if I am), I try to build cities on rivers as much as possible for the +2 health bonus, even at a slight productivity hit.
RELIGIONS
As in the real world, religion can be one of the most uniting or dividing things in CIV. While gifts or insults have only minor benefit on relations (+/-1, rarely more than +/-2; religion can have a huge impact on relations -- seeing +/-4, +/-6 from religion are common. Religion is by far the biggest factor in relations in most games. It seems to be something in the range of +1 relations for every city of your religion in your opponent's land, +1 or 2 if your religion is their state religion. Therefore, pumping out missionaries to convert your neighbors in the good times is as important for the security of your empire as maintaining a powerful military. I try to keep one city pumping out missionaries of your religion the entire game, providing both relationship and economic bonuses.
I try to get an early religion (hinduism or judaism). I also try to pick up as many of the later ones as I can in order to keep friends friendly. A friendly neighbor who has previously converted to your religion but subsequently discovers Islam can suddenly decide that you are a pagan who must be cleansed from the earth. Besides some of the techs (like Divine Right, Islam) offer cool wonders.
BORDER CITIES
Beware of border cities without a large cultural buffer between other cultures. The AI attacks in force. On one game I had a brilliant idea to build the forbidden palace in a border city. Then while I was engaged in a war on the other side of my empire, Saladin declared war and conquered the city instantly with hordes of catapults, knights, and crossbowmen. Of course expensive cultural improvements are lost once a city is conquered. Don't put anything too critical in border cities, especially those without a significant buffer zone, and don't get too involved in constructing major buildings in border cities until you have them well-defended with strong contemporary units. Even civs with slightly positive relations can declare war on you, so don't leave your back side exposed.
SPECIALIZATION
Since you can only build 2 national wonders in a city and because GP points accrue according to specialties, it makes sense to have specialized cities in CIV. I am for a science city (oxford university + great library), a military city (pentagon + heroic epic + west point), a culture city (hermitage + globe theater), an economic city (wall street), and will put the national epic in the city with the most wonders (and most GP points).
In general, keeping a flow of military units from at least one city will keep your cities happy (large cities get upset without protection) and defended. I also try to keep one city pumping out missionaries throughout almost the entire game, occasionally switching production to another city to construct buildings in the city. In my first couple games when I did not continue to produce both military and missionary units in peace time and war time, it caused major problems for me in spite of large leads in other areas.
CIVICS
I try to change as little as possible since I don't play as Spiritual. I will do 2 or 3 switches at once, when possible.
Government: Universal Suffrage is the only one that is very good IMO, and the +1 economic boost to towns only occurs in the late game as towns take so long to develop. Don't get snookered into getting this in the early game with the pyramids, as upkeep is high and you will have no towns to provide the gold bonus.
Legal Civics:
Bureacracy (+50% production/gold in capital) is good in the early game.
Free Speech (+2 gold from towns, +100% culture per city) is my favorite for the late game, but won't do you any good if you don't have towns.
Labor Civics:
Emancipation is the only one I bother with (doubles rate of cottages -> towns; a big synergistic economic boost when combined with appropriate techs, free speech, and universal suffrage).
Economic: State property is great (no distance maintenance costs, +1 food from watermills), while environmentalism is nice at the very end of the game when you get ecology. Because of their position in the tech tree, I usually end up getting economic civics last of all.
Religion:
Religious civics are great. Organized religion (+25% building rate) is great when you are in a building mood and only requires monotheism. Pacifism (+100% GP) is also pretty good. I never get free religion as losing all the state religion bonuses really hurts, as well as losing LOS to all converted cities in other nations.
TECHNOLOGY
Great variability comes in here. In the early era, my priorities (in order) include:
1. Monotheism. For the organized religion civic, as well as to give you 1 (possibly 2 - Judaism and Hinduism) religions. Sometimes I just pick up hinduism, go for alphabet, and then come back for (or trade for) monotheism, as you won't be building too many buildings in the very early game -- mostly units (warriors, settlers, workers), and the upkeep cost isn't worthwhile until your civ becomes more financially secure.
2. Alphabet. After getting the religion, I beeline straight for alphabet. Once you get this, you can trade techs with your neighbors. Being a tech broker can save you a lot of trouble and time so that you don't have to research most of the other ancient age techs yourself.
3. Pottery. Being able to build cottages is key to jump-starting your economy and to give your cottages the time they need to develop into towns to really rake in the dough in the late game.
Other important early techs:
Iron working - to clear jungles
And the techs leading up to watermill are also important.
Middle ages:
I tend to go for mathematics (to get the hanging gardens -- + 1 POP and +1 health in all your cities is huge, especially when you have a lot of fairly small cities). The hanging gardens exploded my productivity and economy in one game when I had a lot of small thinly-spread cities, and suddenly they were all a size bigger.
From there, I look for music (free great artist), philosophy (pacifism/taoism), divine right (versailles/islam). Also the tech that lets you build watermill.
Once I have those, I go for democracy to get emancipation & universal suffrage. Then to communism for its civic, and any other techs that improve the benefit of your towns or windmills (i.e. electricity, I think). I also try to pick up the great people techs first.
Edit: slightly modified section on creative & aggressive traits
To be continued...
LEARN THE RULES
The best-spent two hours for my CIV strategy skills was spent pouring over the civilopedia to understand the rules, the tech trees, improvements, units, etc. It's much easier to do well if you have a clear strategy and know where you want to go. For example, some techs offer bonuses to the first discoverer: a free great person, a free great tech, or starting a religion. Obviously these techs are generally a priority to get first, while others with benefits that are not time-sensitive can wait.
CIV SELECTION
The decision as to which civilization to play as is an individual one. Traits have various strengths and weaknesses:
Industrious: A great trait, as the wonders you get with +50% build speed can duplicate many other civ traits. Half-price forges are great also because they increase your productivity, and for non-industrious civs they are quite expensive.
Philosophical: Fabulous at +100% GP, but the problem is that it is hard to generate GP without wonders, and philosophical nations are likely to lose the wonder race. I prefer industrious, as the philosophical bonus can be more than duplicated with religious civics (Pacificm - +100% GP rate) and the national epic (+100% GP in the city of your choice). You can't have industrious and philosophical together. Industrious is probably better in the early game when you and your rivals have relative technologic parity, while philosophical really takes off in the late game when you are ahead technologically and don't have to sweat too much about a few extra turns in the wonder race.
Financial: Also one of my favorites. Once you get cottages and watermills working, this will gain you +1 extra gold for almost every being worked in your city radius. This is a huge advantage and allows me to stay at 90-100% tech funding from the middle ages onward even with expensive civics, a large army, and a large empire.
Expansive: Not bad, the health is nice, but I find that happiness is much more limiting than health in the early game, although it may be more useful on very high difficulty levels. Cheap granaries while also nice are of dubious value as granaries don't cost many hammers anyway.
Aggressive: A great trait for the warmonger. While experienc can be given by buildings, civics, and wonders, a free extra promotion is great -- especially for barracks-trained units with a couple of levels to boot. More and more experience is required to get more bonuses (2/5/10/17/etc), and so having a free promotion that doesn't set you back at all in the XP quest is good. Since the promotions become more and more powerful the higher in level you go (+20% city attack, +25%, +30% with an extra +10% vs gunpowder units, etc...cumulative!!!), having an extra promotion can result in a huge amount of extra military power, especially if you have planned well to take advantage of other sources of experience.
Spiritual: One of the weakest traits IMO. No anarchy, while nice, is of little benefit as I only chance civics 5-6 times in a game. Cheap temples? Temples are cheap anyway and have fewer benefits than many other buildings.
Creative: +2 culture has significant benefits in the early game, but few in the late game when cities have more culture than they know what to do with. How many times have I conquered a city only to have it flip to a closely adjacent neighbor? How many times have I built cultural improvement (theater, library, etc.) in a conquered city for the exclusive purpose of generating culture (and, sometimes failed), when a creative civ would not have had to worry at all? The automatic expanding cultural radius can be very valuable in expanding in the early game and blocking off large amounts of territory for your later development. While cultural's benefits are mainly in the early game, the benefits can be substantial. I prefer to get industrious instead and build stonehenge for your early culture (although this expires -- soon -- with calender), the benefit of creative is still significant.
Organized: Perhaps the worst trait of all. Only gives a bonus when you have expensive civics, and most of the good civics have little upkeep anyway. Get financial instead; you will be many times ahead economically. Lighthouse and courthouse are the real benefits of organized IMO, but still weak ones.
My favorites are Chinese (Qin Shi Huang) - Industrious/Financial, and English (Victoria) - Philosophical/Financial.
LEVERAGE YOUR STRENGTHS
CIV IMPROVEMENTS
My general strategy for improvements is:
Build resource-specific improvements (plantations, farms, winery, etc.) on specific resources only
Build mines on hills
Build watermills near rivers
Build cottages on all other spots
Clear jungles ASAP
Clear forests late -- generally only in middle ages after I have watermills in place that can add productivity to replace forests
Tech upgrade bonuses make cottages (lots of money, some food) and watermills (+2 production and other bonuses) very powerful. Cottages take time to develop into towns, so they should be placed early. Putting down farms early and deciding to switch them over to cottages late loses much time. Generally, I never build windmills, farms, or plantations at all, except on specific resources that require them. And I try to make a priority of getting the techs that provide increased productivity, food, or income to my terrain improvements (cottages, watermills, etc.)
LEVERAGE YOUR ADVANTAGES
It's important to make the most out of your advantages by drawing upon the synergy of civ traits, civics, improvements, and buildings and wonders. For example, it would be silly to get the aggressive civ trait and fail to build barracks. Synergy can be very powerful when you combine substantial bonuses in the same area from multiple different sources. Aggressive + barracks + pentagon + theocracy, + West Point and Heroic Epic in same city = megapowerful national military (come to think of it, it is still extremely powerful even *without* the aggressive trait or theology -- there are better traits and civics IMO). Philosophical + Pacifism + National Epic = 300% great people points, with 400% in the city with the national epic. And so forth.
It is also important to try to compensate for your disadvantages. For example, if I am not playing an expansive civ (or even if I am), I try to build cities on rivers as much as possible for the +2 health bonus, even at a slight productivity hit.
RELIGIONS
As in the real world, religion can be one of the most uniting or dividing things in CIV. While gifts or insults have only minor benefit on relations (+/-1, rarely more than +/-2; religion can have a huge impact on relations -- seeing +/-4, +/-6 from religion are common. Religion is by far the biggest factor in relations in most games. It seems to be something in the range of +1 relations for every city of your religion in your opponent's land, +1 or 2 if your religion is their state religion. Therefore, pumping out missionaries to convert your neighbors in the good times is as important for the security of your empire as maintaining a powerful military. I try to keep one city pumping out missionaries of your religion the entire game, providing both relationship and economic bonuses.
I try to get an early religion (hinduism or judaism). I also try to pick up as many of the later ones as I can in order to keep friends friendly. A friendly neighbor who has previously converted to your religion but subsequently discovers Islam can suddenly decide that you are a pagan who must be cleansed from the earth. Besides some of the techs (like Divine Right, Islam) offer cool wonders.
BORDER CITIES
Beware of border cities without a large cultural buffer between other cultures. The AI attacks in force. On one game I had a brilliant idea to build the forbidden palace in a border city. Then while I was engaged in a war on the other side of my empire, Saladin declared war and conquered the city instantly with hordes of catapults, knights, and crossbowmen. Of course expensive cultural improvements are lost once a city is conquered. Don't put anything too critical in border cities, especially those without a significant buffer zone, and don't get too involved in constructing major buildings in border cities until you have them well-defended with strong contemporary units. Even civs with slightly positive relations can declare war on you, so don't leave your back side exposed.
SPECIALIZATION
Since you can only build 2 national wonders in a city and because GP points accrue according to specialties, it makes sense to have specialized cities in CIV. I am for a science city (oxford university + great library), a military city (pentagon + heroic epic + west point), a culture city (hermitage + globe theater), an economic city (wall street), and will put the national epic in the city with the most wonders (and most GP points).
In general, keeping a flow of military units from at least one city will keep your cities happy (large cities get upset without protection) and defended. I also try to keep one city pumping out missionaries throughout almost the entire game, occasionally switching production to another city to construct buildings in the city. In my first couple games when I did not continue to produce both military and missionary units in peace time and war time, it caused major problems for me in spite of large leads in other areas.
CIVICS
I try to change as little as possible since I don't play as Spiritual. I will do 2 or 3 switches at once, when possible.
Government: Universal Suffrage is the only one that is very good IMO, and the +1 economic boost to towns only occurs in the late game as towns take so long to develop. Don't get snookered into getting this in the early game with the pyramids, as upkeep is high and you will have no towns to provide the gold bonus.
Legal Civics:
Bureacracy (+50% production/gold in capital) is good in the early game.
Free Speech (+2 gold from towns, +100% culture per city) is my favorite for the late game, but won't do you any good if you don't have towns.
Labor Civics:
Emancipation is the only one I bother with (doubles rate of cottages -> towns; a big synergistic economic boost when combined with appropriate techs, free speech, and universal suffrage).
Economic: State property is great (no distance maintenance costs, +1 food from watermills), while environmentalism is nice at the very end of the game when you get ecology. Because of their position in the tech tree, I usually end up getting economic civics last of all.
Religion:
Religious civics are great. Organized religion (+25% building rate) is great when you are in a building mood and only requires monotheism. Pacifism (+100% GP) is also pretty good. I never get free religion as losing all the state religion bonuses really hurts, as well as losing LOS to all converted cities in other nations.
TECHNOLOGY
Great variability comes in here. In the early era, my priorities (in order) include:
1. Monotheism. For the organized religion civic, as well as to give you 1 (possibly 2 - Judaism and Hinduism) religions. Sometimes I just pick up hinduism, go for alphabet, and then come back for (or trade for) monotheism, as you won't be building too many buildings in the very early game -- mostly units (warriors, settlers, workers), and the upkeep cost isn't worthwhile until your civ becomes more financially secure.
2. Alphabet. After getting the religion, I beeline straight for alphabet. Once you get this, you can trade techs with your neighbors. Being a tech broker can save you a lot of trouble and time so that you don't have to research most of the other ancient age techs yourself.
3. Pottery. Being able to build cottages is key to jump-starting your economy and to give your cottages the time they need to develop into towns to really rake in the dough in the late game.
Other important early techs:
Iron working - to clear jungles
And the techs leading up to watermill are also important.
Middle ages:
I tend to go for mathematics (to get the hanging gardens -- + 1 POP and +1 health in all your cities is huge, especially when you have a lot of fairly small cities). The hanging gardens exploded my productivity and economy in one game when I had a lot of small thinly-spread cities, and suddenly they were all a size bigger.
From there, I look for music (free great artist), philosophy (pacifism/taoism), divine right (versailles/islam). Also the tech that lets you build watermill.
Once I have those, I go for democracy to get emancipation & universal suffrage. Then to communism for its civic, and any other techs that improve the benefit of your towns or windmills (i.e. electricity, I think). I also try to pick up the great people techs first.
Edit: slightly modified section on creative & aggressive traits
To be continued...
