Civilization Thread!

[Herr Matzat]

Is it just me or did the AI get even more retarded?

I like the new civs... religion and spies are pretty pointless.

[MDK]

The Ethiopians are my favourite new civ, I was ruining everyone's shit in a little game I started.

[Benji]

Bought the Gods and Kings expansion the other day. Not as fun as I hoped. Think I may just re-install Civ IV instead.

[Benji]

Why is it that even when I have the pointiest stick, I never like to start a war? Damn my peaceful nature!

[RPS]

I picked up Civ 5 last weekend. Won my first three games with science, diplomacy and cultural victories, and than got absolutely destroyed on level 5 difficulty as Sweden. As Sweden!!!

[stokeriño]

I know there'll be a Civ IV thread buried here somewhere, but...eh.

I've been challenged by a friend of mine to a Civ IV game next week (IV rather than V because he doesn't own V), and I feel the need to brush up on my strategy. And by brush up on, I mean create a strategy because I've never really had a proper one. I just sort of play it by ear, expand a bit, probably conquer a neighbour or two when at the cannon/rifleman sort of stage, and then just meander my way to whatever kind of victory seems best at the time.

My friend, however, definitely has a strategy in that he plays every game of Civ IV in exactly the same damn way. That being:

* Start game as Huayna Capac of the Incans, so as to a) start with Mysticism, and b) have the Industrious trait.

* Whore religion-founding for future cash domination (the way this works has always been my biggest annoyance with Civ IV, incidentally), for which Huayna Capac's Financial trait doesn't hurt either.

* Whore Wonder-building for eventual scientific victory.

I've tried fighting fire with fire in past games but I basically have to be lucky and hope he gets waylaid early on with a couple of unwanted wars or something, because otherwise no other leader/civ is quite as efficient as Huayna Capac at this. I've also tried forcing him to choose a different leader, but then he gets grumpy and disinterested in the game.

So: anyone got a basic strategy to suggest? I'm fully willing to launch blindly into it next week just to see how it goes.

[RPS]

I have two general strategies that I usually deployed in Civ IV (and to a lesser extent in Civ V)

*Brute force strategy. I find this works when, a) you are playing against non-AI characters and b) you have the best grasp of the conditions being played. I rarely deploy this strategy if there is more than 8 players and generally only use it if the map gives you the chance to do so. If you play with a huge sprawled out map, a militaristic strategy has pros (you can build up a huge army without anybody knowing) and cons (it's much harder to pull off). I usually take this approach if I've got two continents evenly split up between 8 or so people. If you are just playing one-on-one with no other AI or human players, this strategy could work wonders. In deploying this strategy, I usually take out a weak player first, strong player next, weak player next, strong player next.

*Cultural victory. Kublai Kahn is a leader I select a lot because he's got the aggressive and creative attributes, which makes these two strategies work together very well. If I'm playing against 10 or more people, OR I'm in a situation where the map is very fractured and it's hard to really mobilize a military... I go cultural. If you go with Khan, you can sort of work the two strategies together. Culture and domination are two of the harder ways to win, but I find cultural works well because you can usually quantify how many turns you'll win in because you'll know how many turns it'll take to get to legendary status. This is invaluable. With the other strategies, there is lots of x factors you can't account for, whereas the cultural victory gives you a set amount of turns you can win in. Cultural victories are pretty easy - you build the right buildings and wonders, you orientate your cities towards culture and you make decisions accordingly. A lot of people prefer diplomacy or space race, and while I respect the strategies, I prefer going either for a domination or cultural victory myself.

[stokeriño]

Yeah the more I think about it, the Brute Force approach seems a decent punt (I suspect he'd out-culture me with his Wonder-whoring too). We'll only choose the map type/size/etc. on a whim anyway so I could gear it towards one that would help with that goal (just a couple of big continents maybe).

And with that in mind, methinks Shaka is the best guy for the job...

WAR ZULU~!

(I shall report back on my abject failure next week )

[Sousa]

If your friend is sitting around going for space in a multiplayer game, you owe it to yourself to make him pay for it. If you're on the same continent, brutalize him with someone like Shaka or Kublai or one of the Caesars.

Shooting for early religion is one way to generate money, but shooting for early Currency is much better. You get one gold per city with a religion in it, but just building Wealth in a back-end city or two for a few turns can usurp that very, very easily. If you build The Great Lighthouse and have a lot of coastal cities, that's even better.

Another thing you can do, if you have a wonder resource, is try to build a wonder for fail gold. If he builds the Pyramids and you're halfway through, you get a ton of gold dropped in your lap. Use it to fund research. There are entire strategies built around wonder fail gold; lots of advanced players only build a few wonders (Great Library, Great Lighthouse, Oracle, sometimes Pyramids, Kremlin for whip abuse).

Something else to keep in mind: if he's building wonders (and missionaries for religion spam), he's not building troops. And you can get him far, far, far before rifles and cannons.

A few war strategies that work well:

* Elepult Reaping™ is my favorite early war strategy. If you have elephants, hook them up and pair War Elephants with Catapults. If you have a Philosophical leader (Lincoln and Frederick are particularly good with this strategy), you can use an early Great Scientist to grab Mathematics through a bulb, then head for Construction and start building Cats while you wait for Horseback Riding and Elephants. Elephants will wreck absolutely everything except spears and pikes (bring along some Horse Archers to pillage metal) and have a long window of usefulness. Even when Longbows come online, Elephants will still do respectfully; you just need more Catapults. Never fall in love with a siege unit; keep building Cats.

* If he doesn't have metal or if you can pillage the metal, Horse Archers are a very, very good rush unit. They're harder to use on multiplayer because the other guy will be more likely to spam units, but an AI will generally just let you murder him. Stay away from Protective leaders with this strategy, especially Sitting Bull. (EDIT: It's worth mentioning that anyone with a Horse Archer Unique Unit makes this strategy even stronger. Promote Hannibal's Numidian Cavalry to Flanking II right out of the gate for a powerful unit, and Keshiks with Mongolia are of course amazing.)

* The easiest warring unit in the game, in my opinion, are Cuirassiers and Cavalry. The Cuir beeline does force you to go through the Aesthetics line, which can net you the Great Library if you shoot for it and the free Music Great Artist (plan to use it for a Golden Age). I shoot for using Liberalism to grab Military Tradition (having already grabbed Gunpowder), building the Taj Mahal if it's possible, and then building a fuckton of Cuirs (supplemented with spies for the Support City Revolt mission). If you mass-whip them (have a city with the Globe Theater and a lot of food, and you can just whip the shit out of it with no consequence), you can reasonably have an army cooked up very quickly. And the best part is that they'll later upgrade to Cavalry, which have an insane window of usefulness--as I mentioned to you before, you can use Airships to bombard Rifles and keep conquering with Cavs long after it should be reasonably possible.

Basically, if he's going for a religious/wonder strategy, the obvious solution is to be aggressive. Use Slavery. Use chops to accelerate things. Use whip overflow (wait until something's about halfway done before you whip it rather than whipping it immediately, and you'll get extra hammers for your next build) to build a quick army. If you get elephants, go for Elepults. But there's absolutely no reason to wait for Rifling if your friend is just going to smoke you with science.

Oh, if you're picking the map type? Go for Pangaea. Don't even risk ending up on the opposite continent from him. Harass, harass, harass. Show him why going to space in multiplayer is a dumb idea.

P.S. The best reason to play as Huayna aren't even his traits; the best reasons are the Quecha (massing Quechas can take out a nearby non-Protective neighbor in record time) and Terraces (Granaries with Culture = Huayna doesn't need Monuments = Huayna doesn't need religions either = faster start because Granaries are a building that every town wants, often first).

[Sousa]

So I finally got this (with Gods and Kings and apparently all or most of the DLC). Who's good to start with to learn the game? I've heard things like Stacks o' Doom and such are no longer part of the package.

[Ruki]

So I finally got this (with Gods and Kings and apparently all or most of the DLC). Who's good to start with to learn the game? I've heard things like Stacks o' Doom and such are no longer part of the package.

No more stacks o doom. And if you like to war, Montezuma is fun (every unit you kill is more culture). And can't remember if it was the greeks or Romans who were also pretty good.

[Berober]

I had a fun game with Dido on an Archipelago map, since she's pretty much built for Naval Warfare, but you can't go wrong with just picking random everything!

[King Ellis]

The other civs tried to get you to pay for a truce but you declared that there'd be no white flag above your door.

[Sousa]

But then he murdered them all and it's not so bad, it's not so bad.

[thatshortguy]

The other civs tried to get you to pay for a truce but you declared that there'd be no white flag above your door.

But then he murdered them all and it's not so bad, it's not so bad.

And I want to thank you for giving me the best posts of this page.

[TKz]

The other civs tried to get you to pay for a truce but you declared that there'd be no white flag above your door.

But then he murdered them all and it's not so bad, it's not so bad.

I love you, EWB.

[Sousa]

Stingy with the "like" button, are we?

[ROC]

DEAR SLIM

(moment ruined)

[thatshortguy]

The other civs tried to get you to pay for a truce but you declared that there'd be no white flag above your door.

But then he murdered them all and it's not so bad, it's not so bad.

I love you, EWB.

You heartless bastard. Ellis and Sousa get the love, but I keep the trend going and get a Piper-esque poke in the eye?!

Back on topic: I have obviously missed many boats as far as Civ strategy between IV and V. What is "Stack 'o Doom"?

[Ruki]

In civ 4 you could build how ever many units you want and put them all on one tile (stack o doom!). Can steamroll most like that.

Civ 5? Units can't share the same space, so you have to use more strategy.