Help me understand Civ 5

kinger8938 · 2 Jul 2016 at 07:07

Morning! Ive had the base game for sometime but over that time have only put about 8 hrs into it :O its my first game of this type and i reallly want to love it but i find myself lost before i get that far in to a round

So ti encourage me to try again i purchased all the dlc in the steam sale as it was dirt cheap and i hear it vastly improves the game.

Suppose im just after some advice. Last night i started as egypt randomly, got fairly far on a small map, found all the other 3 civs on the map but then sort of hit a wall as to what i should do next. For example when you can talk to the leaders nothing seems to work like make friendships etc so i imagine i must somehow increase my relationship with them? At what point would you decide to just attack instead?

I set up a caravan trade route with one by myself but dont really understand what that did for me! It then got attacked by bandits

Also i did start on easy which probably makes things a bit boring but just want to understand it for now! I also feel lost when it lets you choose so many options difficulywise as i dont want it too easy or too hard, maybe its a case or starting low and keep increasing until it feels fair

Seanspeed · 2 Jul 2016 at 07:57

That's hilarious, pretty much the exact same situation for me the other day. Bit less hours, but I also randomly started with the Egyptians on a small map and eventually had no idea what to do next.

I did take out the Russians, cuz well, they kept whining about things, but I dont want to be a total warmonger, even though apparently all the other civilizations hate me now and consider me one.

Not sure how to 'win' at this point without just destroying everything in sight.

kinger8938 · 2 Jul 2016 at 08:06

Seanspeed said:
That's hilarious, pretty much the exact same situation for me the other day. Bit less hours, but I also randomly started with the Egyptians on a small map and eventually had no idea what to do next.

I did take out the Russians, cuz well, they kept whining about things, but I dont want to be a total warmonger, even though apparently all the other civilizations hate me now and consider me one.

Not sure how to 'win' at this point without just destroying everything in sight.

Not just me then! Lol

I always read about people sinking hours in and time flying by as they play! I really want that from this, but right now im not too sure what its all about.

I do understand there are several ways to achieve victory, so maybe its about deciding on that first as a path and going with it. Also research etc im never too sure what the best choice is, i tend to go with what sounds good, or what most advisors suggest

[HB]Rugrat · 2 Jul 2016 at 08:18

There are numerous ways to win a game and it depends largely on your own personality which one you pursue. I almost always go for a military victory but spend the first half of the game with almost no military units.

I generally spread out as far as I can in the early game and found as many cities as possible - stopping when I get to a natural border. While avoiding fights with other civilisations I focus my city improvements around scientific / research development to race ahead with military technology. You can soon make cities very difficult to conquer to ward off aggressive opponents (city walls, defensive units like catapults etc). Once I've developed musketeers / cannons I'll usually be in a position of having a ton of cash, a lot of cities and the ability to generate military units at a fast pace that are much stronger than what the others have - then I get revenge on those civilisations that tried to bully me in the early game

NeoWave · 2 Jul 2016 at 09:15

Civilization V without Brave New World is a bit rubbish tbh, especially compared to Civ IV. If you can get BNW on the cheap then do so as it turns a relative poor showing into a pretty amazing game imho.

Devrij · 2 Jul 2016 at 09:38

It's hard to explain in one post as there is a lot to the game, but I'll do my best!

We'll assume here that you just want to crush your enemies rather than winning the space race or anything like that, because you'll figure all that out easily enough later on.

City placement is important. Luxury tiles like furs, ivory, copper, spices and the like increase your population's happiness once you use a worker to build the necessary tile improvement to extract them. This becomes really important as your cities grow and as you found new cities because population growth and new cities decrease happiness which can really stall your progress or even cause rebellions! You also want a good balance of production and food from the tiles around your city to make sure it can grow, but won't take forever to build new buildings etc. Remember you can only work city tile improvements if you have enough population (eg a city with only 4 population can only work 4 tiles) so don't get ahead of yourself by building loads of tile improvements when you can't use them yet. Workers cost upkeep so you want just enough to keep up with your city growth.

Technology trees are really important. You might be tempted to just focus on the ones that get you cool units, but remember culture unlocks policies that can really buff your civ in terms of gold output and happiness, faith can help you build and spread a religion that gives your civ great buffs, and science helps you unlock more stuff faster so you want to keep things balanced.

Like another poster said, it helps to avoid wars early on and focus on expanding into the most valuable territory and stabilising your economy. World wonders can give you some strong buffs but building them early on is a gamble as they take a long time to build. Often worth it though! Just remember someone else might beat you to it if you take too long.

Once you have got your cities to a point where they don't take forever to build anything, and you have built roads between your cities (produces extra gold and makes your units move much faster) you can move from fending off irritating barbarians to going to war with your nearest competitor if they haven't already decided to do the same to you.

Trading luxuries (make sure you keep at least one of the luxury item left over as you'll lose its happiness bonus otherwise) and things like that will help improve relationships with other Civs if you want to forge alliances. Caravans and cargo boats are a fantastic source of gold when trading with another civ, and you can actually use them to move production or food from an established city to a new one to help it grow faster.

By no means a comprehensive guide, but hopefully enough to shed some light on things!

Teaf · 2 Jul 2016 at 09:42

For example when you can talk to the leaders nothing seems to work like make friendships etc so i imagine i must somehow increase my relationship with them?

You can increase your relationship with them in a bunch of ways: offer them a great trade deal (like a free luxury), adopt their religion, go to war with them against one of their enemies, establish an embassy, have the same ideology, don't go to war with anyone (creates warmonger penalties) or don't expand too quickly. Be careful of their allies also, if you are trying to build a relationship with Civ A and are trying to destroy Civ B, then if A and B are allies you'll upset both by attacking B.

At what point would you decide to just attack instead?

Assuming I'm not going Domination then if it's the only Civ I'm met at the start. I'd do this with some Civs because of how war hungry they are. Like if I see Alexander at the start and I've found no one else, I'd wardec him immediately and send a warrior to camp out near his capital harassing any workers so they can't grow.

If I'm well into the game I'd attempt to make the Civ declare war on me rather than me on them by annoying them. Just declaring war will cost you significantly in relations with nearly every Civ in the game. You can annoy by doing stuff like stealing land with a Great General or insulting them through talks.

For that trade route you made, if it's internal it would be either providing the city is getting sent too with either 4 food or 4 production. That's the default amount for land based internal trade routes. You can create sea trade routes for the same purpose, but they provide double the amount of food or production.

If you need any more advice just ask but it's really hard to give general advise as the game is too complex to cover everything in one go.

kinger8938 said:
I do understand there are several ways to achieve victory, so maybe its about deciding on that first as a path and going with it. Also research etc im never too sure what the best choice is, i tend to go with what sounds good, or what most advisors suggest

Science is the easiest to go with as it's very passive and you pull ahead of the AI on tech so you won't have much issues with wars (on lower difficulties at least). Best way to learn what technology you want is too see what you need that's around you and around where you are planning to expand to. Like if you have no production you might want to go with Animal Husbandry quickly and hope some horses show up, or get Mining to turn a hill into more production. If you have lots of sea based resources you'll want to get them fished as soon as possible. You'll also want to note any particular early game bonuses the Civ you have picked has. Such as Babylon get a Great Scientist when you research Writing, and in this case I'd ignore everything else on this Civ and get Writing immediately.

Azza · 2 Jul 2016 at 09:54

You'll be there soon enough young one.

Spacedeck · 2 Jul 2016 at 09:54

Hugely reccomend watching some Youtube videos. I personelly used this one:

He explains in good detail, what you should be doing. I started my own game so that I could follow along with the gameplay. I only have around 40 hours played. I'm still fairly new to the game and need to learn much more.

I don't own any of the DLC, so now would be a good time to pick them up. I actually forgot about the Steam sale after the first day

kinger8938 · 2 Jul 2016 at 10:33

Well i restarted this morning as washington on difficulty 3 using what i learnt from yesterdays game! Expanded fairly early and have new york now too, met a lot of citie states some of which are friendly as i got rid of bandits etc

Now another civ has asked for help in war against portugal, and i thought she was a bit rude at our first meeting so have agreed to help

Also produced something that instantly duplicated my ground units which is handy as they finished just in time for this agreement, so am i right in thinking i just declare war and start attacking?

Teaf · 2 Jul 2016 at 11:48

kinger8938 said:
Also produced something that instantly duplicated my ground units which is handy as they finished just in time for this agreement, so am i right in thinking i just declare war and start attacking?

You might already be at war if you agreed to join one with another Civ. Highly advise building some siege units if you plan on capturing cities. Keep an eye on your overall happiness though as capturing cities will drastically reduce it.