Alright /v/
Any strategies for Civilization V? I suck ass.
Redoing this thread. Would like some more ideas.
self bump
>>319353780
Literally just fuck around and actually build/use units.
It's the easiest Civ game ever made.
Well, unless you're talking about playing against human opponents. then you might need some actual tips.
>>319354354
Not him, but I struggle going for a Domination where several civs (sometimes even the whole map) turn on me after I take over a civ.
Even if I've kept up allies etc.
I can never get so far ahead to take on the entire map.
Stop sucking.
>>319354354
both. may do multiplayer matches soon.
>>319354591
The AI is always looking for a way to backstab/get mad at you. If you're going for a domination victory, that is the fastest way to get them mad at you. But if you're going for a domination victory, you should also have the largest army so it won't matter if three civs declare war on you.
And here's where it gets funny. The smaller your army, the more uppity the other civs get. The larger your army, the more they fear you and won't attack you. They can denounce you all day. But if you have a larger army, they won't attack.
Basically, you just need to play a lot more to learn the ways to cheese the AI.
>>319354591
Denounce first, stage units on their border, ask allies to denounce them, ask allies to go to war with them first, bully their city states and generally do your best to get them to declare war first.
Don't take more cities than you need to, and puppet them whenever possible. Don't take their capital until you HAVE to. Make sure to gift things to civs you want to be friendly with, and if a friendly civ denounces another civ, do it too. Make declarations of friendship and agree to all the demands your allies make, and be sure to trade your luxury resources around. Try to share a religion/ideology if possible Have at least one strong ally. Make friends/allies of the people beyond you, rather than your neighbors (so they covet your stuff less).
Warmongering is a penalty, but ONLY a penalty. You can both offset and minimize it.
>>319354614
Um, well, let's see...
Build cities on rivers if you can, and connect to other cities by river. Saves you the cost/time of making roads.
Don't try to get wonders you won't use, and rush the ones you really need. Expect to get 0-2 per era, at most. Making more is a colossal waste. Most wonders are totally useless to a given victory condition, and you SHOULD be going for a victory condition. If you want a simulation game, play Civ3, Civ4, or Alpha Centauri.
If you have strategic resources, trade them or use them. If you've got iron, make some fucking swordsman. If you have horses, make some fucking horsemen.
You don't need most buildings most places. If you build a city just to exploit a luxury or secure a border (both useful things to do), don't build a fucking barracks there. It costs you gold per turn, and you'll never fucking use it.
Build cities on luxury/strategy resources, when possible. Saves you the hassle of having a worker get them for you. You still need the appropriate tech before you get it, though.
Don't waste time improving every tile for every city. It's a huge waste of time
>>319355647
best reply
thanks anon
>>319355647
Improve some tiles early though. Anything with a bonus resource (like wheat, stone, cows, etc) that isn't a luxury/strategic resource, you should be improving and using.
Don't build too many cities. Start with 4-5 (try to maintain parity with other civs, don't fall behind or get too far ahead), and maybe end up with 10 or so. More is kind of pointless.
Play on medium speed, medium sized maps. It's what the game was built for, and shit tends to break down at larger/slower size/speed. Small/fast is good for online play though.
Prince is 'easy', King is 'normal'. Every other difficulty is quirky in some ways. Play Prince at first, King once you've won a few times. Go higher if you want a challenge, but it'd be better to play online.
Try not to lose units, but don't cry over them. You can always make more.
Make units! Use them! Hunt down barbarians, bully city states, intimidate enemy civs, go to war! Have a fucking army for god's sake! What's the point of saving all that gold by not building worthless buildings and roads otherwise!
Religion can be powerful, but it's also finnicky and takes a lot of effort to deal with. I wouldn't bother early on. Better to a get a lead in other ways.
Use great people to build their special terrain improvements over strategic resources. You still get the resource, and the improvement is almost always better than the normal one. Plus most other uses for great people suck in comparison, unless you're going for a culture victory.
Ignore techs you don't intend to use until you can't not ignore them.
It's almost always worth building a building that improves gold yield, if you can, but don't waste a lot of time building a market in a town that makes like, 3 gold.
Libraries and universities are good everywhere.
Culture is important, but you can put off focusing on it for a while.
Science is your god, and most of it comes from having high population in cities. Don't fall behind!
Spying is kinda eh...
>>319355647
im a massive casual and ive been automating my workers since civ 4
how bad am i fucking myself by doing this
Civ V is the easiest civ of all time.
It's not worth it building too many cities, just build a few and build them sky high with massive amounts of population.
If you want a real challenge, play Civ III.
>>319356695
OP here.
I would definitly not recommend automating workers. Eventually they'll either idle or start destroying improvements and building the same one over.
Just have them idle in the city/around it.
>>319356310
Connect every city you can, always. You need the gold.
Gold is almost always more useful than production, and anything that lets you make more gold or reduces the cost of buyouts is fucking worth it.
Buy > Build most times, basically. Once you get going, anyway.
That said, don't waste production on science/culture/gold/whatever. Put it to use actually making units and buildings or wonders.
Plunder your enemy improvements for money, whenever possible. City state ones too, if you can get away with it.
Steal enemy workers and settlers. Lurk around their borders with scouts and nab the fuckers whenever you can. They always turn into workers for you. Much more efficient than building your own. City state ones too.
For serious play, Honor and Liberty starts suck. Tradition is much better. But Liberty makes it easier to start, if you don't have a good build order.
It's usually only worthwhile to upgrade veteran units with a lot of abilities, since the cost of upgrading units is rarely justified. If you have too many shitty ones, just gift them to ally city states.
Cultured city states are better early on than building a shit-ton of amphitheaters everywhere.
Every Maritime city state is valuable. Make them all your allies.
Happiness is only important if it's above zero, and playing on any reasonable difficulty it's going to be difficult to keep it even there, a lot of the time. Don't slack off on collesiums and shit.
On that note, mercantile city states are quite useful.
Let's see... what else...
>>319356695
Eh, not much, really. They're like, 5% as efficient as doing it yourself, and you'll end up with WAY too much useless shit everywhere, and too much gold tied up in roads, but they'll hit the necessary stuff. Your luxury/strategic resources will be improved, and you'll get road connections.
So basically, do it if you don't want to deal with the hassle, but don't expect to get nearly as much out of their work as otherwise. If you see them making a farm on a non-floodplain-desert early on, you know they're just being retarded.
>>319356939
Guess that's all I can think of offhand.
I'll take any questions though. But even with just that stuff, beating Prince/King AIs shouldn't be much trouble.
I'm probably even worse at the game than you, OP, but in my experience, it's better to get a shit ton of money than focus on building your military early on. With money, you can buy allies right before the world congress starts, and once you're in control of that, you basically stay in control. Diplomatic victories are the easiest to get.
>>319357713
Unless you're playing on large/epic or something, I find that domination victories are quickest. Just have to grab all the AI capitals. You can generally do that before congress even starts, if you know what you're doing.
But yeah, diplomatic/cultural victories are 'easy' in that you don't need to do much other than turtle and research/build.
Deny all Declarations of Friendship, stay out of global politics as much as possible.
Trade if you really have to.
>>319357694
If I'm playing as Venice, should I try to spam merchants and try to buy City-States with luxuries?
>>319358618
This only works on lower difficulties, and often leaves you behind other factions in tech/expansion.
On Prince and lower, you can generally rush a diplomatic/cultural victory by careful management, before the AI can do much. even on King, really, if you know what you're doing.
But on higher difficulties, it becomes more of a crapshoot.
play Civ III
or Civ 4 if you want
V isn't bad, it's just not those two
>>319358953
Venice is a sort of hard-mode civ to play, on anything approaching reasonable difficulty levels. They can be good at playing the politics and trading game, but exploiting their ability to expand through merchants, but they'll always be weak militarily, and they'll generally fall fairly far behind in science/culture/gold early on. You can claw your way back, but it's not easy unless you have good knowledge of the game.
But yeah, get the critical resources early, but by and large keep mercantile and maritime city states as allies rather than absorbing them.
Also go tradition to start, 100%, every time. You need those bonuses to keep up until you can start grabbing useful city states.
>>319359312
also about venice: don't even think about trying to play venice in multiplayer, it simply does not work against someone who properly knows how to take advantage of it
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=169564537
You guys tried out this mod yet?
>>319353780
Seriously? What difficulty are you playing on that you have issues
>>319359897
Prince
![funny-japan-48[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xMvkuV7.jpg "funny-japan-48[1].jpg")
>Pick japs
>Wage war against everything
>Win because of your OP trait
>?????
>Profit
>>319359227
But Civ V has SFM porn.
>>319360376
Their trait is pretty good, but the problem is that Samurai kind of suck, and they have NOTHING to help them in terms of economy or production. So they'll fall behind in every way, except that their military units will be 1/3 more powerful, over the course of a whole war.
Huns or Greeks are way better domination civs.
>>319360376
japanese trait honestly is not "that" great
early on you'll still have issues with dedicated early game military civs and later on there's a good chance you're falling behind in tech and economy
also doesn't help they have essentially only 1 UU and no UB
>>319353780
I beat the game on the highest difficulty as Aztecs.
I was good at convincing George Washington to help me destroy everyone else and then I betrayed him.
>>319360524
it really doesn't help the samurai are just another "more of the same" unit and not a particularly good one at that
best units are those that offer an entirely new strategy or unique advantage, like those hunnish battering rams
anyone else think the AI in the final version of the game, is way to passive?
if you really want you can just turtle for victory
>>319360878
Or anything with a unique promotion that carries over through upgrades, I'd say.
English Longbow -> crossbows -> gattling guns (maybe one step in between, can't recall) is just... just brutal.
>>319360376
>Not choosing Germany
>Spreading your Christianity and rolling over boundaries with Panzers.
>>319361012
longbowmen are the crossbow replacement
it goes longbowmen -> gatling -> machine gun -> bazooka
english bazooka are so hilariously op its not even funny anymore, though you've already won the game at that point
and heck baseline longbowmen are already fantastic given their 3 tile range which allows them to act like pseudo-artillery an entire era earlier
>>319361039
Germany is kind of mid-tier unless you turn Barbarians up to raging. They have to spend a lot of effort to gather up generally weak units, meaning their main advantage isn't very applicable in the early-game,which is the only time you can really exploit it.
Plus, given everything, they basically HAVE to go honor, if for no other reasons than they need the bonus versus barbarians, and to see where new camps spawn. Granted you can rack up decent gold and culture that way too, but even so.
They are kind of weak. If anything the Songhai have a better barbarian-related ability, and better uniques.
>>319361261
Ah, you're right. For some reason I thought they replaced composite bowmen. It's been a while since I played.
But yeah, I rarely get to bazookas (I tend to play domination, and end games quickly), but even just at gatling guns they're horrifyingly strong.
>>319360524
I don't play Japan, but that issue got fixed somewhat.
Samurai can now improve ocean resources when embarked, so like free multi-use fishing boats. FUCKING godly when you have a non-coastal city but have Water luxuries you couldn't normally improve. Zero a shit tho, and the Trait is 'eh'.
PSA for all the Civ Vet's here. Get the Community patch, it makes the game MUCH harder without inflating values. (Much betetr Barb/civ unit AI In/out of war ectect) http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=526185
Also if you want something different and IMO better get the Community (balance) patch too. Makes the game feel new, and almost every civ is actually viable to play rather than Babylon/Korea/Poland/Shoshone Circlejerk.
>>319362254
>Makes the game feel new, and almost every civ is actually viable to play rather than Babylon/Korea/Poland/Shoshone Circlejerk.
(Babylon here. Love dem walls)
>>319361660
games I play tend to last long enough to get into the high end units and bazookas are just silly in how powerful they are
that said for other people who like to go tall and long, what do you do when your largest city reaches the point its additional citizens literally cannot be used anymore for anything other than unemployed
do you stop growing or do you keep growing for that extra bit of production?
>>319362376
I used to play Bab too, but I end up just turtling behind walls, 4 city Trad into Rat then Freedom and shit out Great scientists and win a Science victory quick as hell.
Every civ was rework in the CBP including Bab though I can't find the patchnotes online atm. No civ has 2 UU's anymore but rather a new lore-friendly UB or UI now. As much as I loathe having to link reddit, anyone interested should read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/35ijhj/community_balance_patch_super_review/
No, it's not my mod. I'm just passing on the good news.
>>319362730
With specialists that shouldn't really happen. I've had Late 30 Pop Incan Terrace cities that still have tiles to work. Remember that extra pop growth = extra science too though - science that same pop would cost more from a new city. (% science research penalty per city)
anyone else here fucking hate building walls?
it just looks so damn ugly, especially lategame
>>319354591
Be very careful about warmonger penalties.
Be careful about who you choose to declare friendship with.
Be careful about who you denounce.
>>319362812
>I used to play Bab too, but I end up just turtling behind walls, 4 city Trad into Rat then Freedom and shit out Great scientists and win a Science victory quick as hell.
What I like about Babylon is that I can play them any way I want. the walls and bowmen mean I can defend or attack strongly early on, to establish a lead, then roll that into tech and carry my lead into any different type of victory.
Generally I go domination, because I find it easiest, but I sometimes just play spoiler after everyone else has already settled on a victory type. Just exploit any leftover weaknesses, basically.
I will take a look at the mod, though. It's been a while since I've played, largely because I played the game to death, so maybe this will rekindle my interest.
>>319363026
I currently have a netherlands game where amsterdam hit 50 pop about halfway through the modern era
and its still growing at like once per 4 turns
>>319363168
Bab is VERY flexible, since a science lead can be really used for all victory types. Poland is kind of similar with the 7 free policies over the course of the game - you can really do some crazy stuff if you put them in the right places. I have ~1.8K Civ 5 hours and I got quite a bit of that from the CBP after I thought the wild ride was over. Forever.
>>319363318
That's pretty neat, did you get a godly marsh/polder start? Those things are crazy if you get tonnes up. You most likely went Tradition with such high growth, so that's only -20 unhappiness with the two Trad Happiness policies. I'd keep her growing to see how high she gets desu.
>>319363805
>Bab is VERY flexible, since a science lead can be really used for all victory types. Poland is kind of similar with the 7 free policies over the course of the game - you can really do some crazy stuff if you put them in the right places.
Only problem I have with Poland is that both their uniques are lackluster. Their trait is amazing, but by and large it's all they'll have going for them, so they're weak early on, and they HAVE to specialize right from the start.
Babylon, on the other hand, has two really good uniques, and their trait comes in later, after you're already in the lead.
>>319363805
no it was a desert netherlands with marble so I actually managed to grab hanging gardens and petra
>>319364250
that said my second most populous city is rotterdam which is indeed settled right in the middle of swamp central and has respectable 42 inhabitants
rest of my cities are all 30+
according to info addict I have a larger population than the rest of the world combined
netherlands are fun if you get a good start
>>319364423
I always liked the idea of polders, but the never seem to work out for me. Plus sea beggars are just... never useful for my style of play.
I get why it could be useful, though, what with 3 (is it 3?) inherent promotions.
>>319364080
Agreed, the Winged Hussar can be pretty neat especially if you upgrade from the Pikes you get from Mercenary army. (Free pillage, get gold from attacking cities) But you can't really effectively mass them. at all. The Ducal stables only really has the extra +1 gold bonus going for it, and it's usually not much.
Bab got a little nerfed when composite bowmen were introduced since the Bowmen were spectacular when it was Archer->Crossbowman. Low period of usefulness, but ranged units are OP so it's still pretty good. They are top tier for good reason though, and all 3 unique aspects have pretty good synergy overall. My go-to Civ is Inca though, hnng on good mountain surrounded hills and Slinger shenanigans.
>>319364250
>>319364423
For some reason the AI is pretty shit-tier at growing large cities, settler spam maybe? The only reason I'd play Netherlands though is for the Polders, love me some UI's.
Threadly reminder that if you're not playing Civ V with Community Balance Patch, Community Patch, and City State Diplomacy, you're doing it wrong.
You can get the handy exe file that installs everything for you from the civfanatics CBP page.
>>319364672
if you have 2 or more promotion + buildings sea beggars roll out of the harbors with double attack
also they can heal anywhere so in theory you can roll out sea beggars, find yourself a city state nobody cares about and keep attacking it gaining massive amounts of cash per turn thanks to prize ships 3
>>319354591
AI is dogshit in this game, it's not you
>>319364989
Okay, that does sound pretty sweet.
>>319364980
Beat you to it heh. Isn't City State diplomacy integrated with the vanilla CBP since quite a while back?
>>319364989
Okay wow, I don't normally play water maps. Ever. But that sound's pretty damn awesome. Might go give William another roll sometime.
>>319365294
william is utterly insane at capturing coastal cities
that double attack is CRUCIAL to a coastal city rush since it allows you to attack, attack again and retreat allow your other ships to repeat the stunt while normally you'd only get a single attack with a single ship
>genuinely suprised this thread is so popular
Isabella is best waifu. I vassalize her every game if Spain's around.
>>319353780
Focus on growth. Growth=pop. Pop=science.
>>319366618
>Capitulation
What is this?
>>319367992
It lets you vassalize another civ. It's part of the Civ IV Diplomacy features mod. There's also map and tech trading, but I disable tech trading in options as I've never liked it.
You can get the mod with the CBP package here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=528034
OP here with another question.
Is it true that Tradition is the best way to go 100% for all Civs, or should others take other paths based off their UA or other attribute?
>Multiplayer
Have a portable or dual screen setup so you can do something during the 30 minute wait between turns
>AI
just turtle and focus on a space victory if you can't do anything else.
>>319369036
It's usually the best way to go for any of the top-tier civs, I'd say. Some less competitive ones can get away with other starts.
But generally you're not going to get more than 4 decent cities at all quickly, and in some games you might not found more than half a dozen total, getting the rest from conquest or whatever.
Liberty, generally, only helps much if you want lots of cities fast, and it kind of actually hinders you getting an ancient era wonder, since you need to pump out settlers in your capital city. It also suffers from the fact that gold > production, and workers being somewhat weak in terms of actual bonuses to cities from regular improvements.
Honor is generally very weak unless you want to fight barbarians, so basically Germany or the Songhai, both of which are barely mid-tier.
So yeah, tradition is usually just the best. But Liberty *can* make it easier to get a start you're happy with, if you're new to the game.
played it with my tulpa on hotseat allies, breddy gud
>>319353780
One, one other tip that I sort of forgot. It's not as good anymore, and it's not really great until Emperor/Deity, but it's still useful.
If (when) you have extra luxury resources (extra being any that you don't need to keep you above zero happiness), trade them for lump sums of gold from the AI. You can get mad dosh that way early, prevent your opponents from using it, and then do the same thing again later on. Plus if you break the treaty for whatever reason, you get the resource back, but you already have the gold, so you don't lose anything.
>>319357694
early game what's the best thing to invest in in a cities civilization management? food, gold or science?
>>319369993
Honestly? All three. Get gold by every means possible, roll it into food and science.
Also military. Can't forget that.
But really, you can't let any of the four slide.
>>319369993
Food
Thread almost ded. Rip.
>>319369993
I would say all three plus millitary, but also work production too.
>>319369885
Unless you're the Netherlands, in which case you can trade all your luxuries.
OP here
This was my longest living thread. Thanks for all the help guys.
