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[mavkiel]

Naw, some of the ai can be trusted more or less. Yes, they might get a little frisky with you, if you have a really small army. However, if you maintain a respectable sized force, you can live with some of them. Also, some of the computers don't really hold a grudge if you win a war they started.

Religion is a fun thing, my advice though is decide early on what you want to do with it. Do you want to make cash? Do you want it to feed your culture? Or aid growth? Idea being, if you mix and match the buffs religion give you, you will end up with a pretty horrible religion. If you focus on one of those things though, it can open up options.

 

[Billy D Williams]

Your first game is gonna be WEEEIIIIRRRRD as Hell, but if you just go with it and do your best its a LOT of fun! Just start learning the basics and once you reach game two your not going to want to wait to start!

Also, this is literally the best deal I've ever gotten on a game. For the game and all DLC I have I spent maybe 40 bucks. Right now I'm sitting at probably 300 hours of gameplay and I'm STILL finding new strategies and experimenting with gameplay styles. The game is literally almost limitless in what you can do. And its a fucking blast!

 

[Syntax Error]

Oh also, enable quick movement/combat. That will help keep you sane. Even with those on, a single game ends up about 3-5 hours for me. More if I go OC with my cities.

 

[Latinidiot]

Oh also, enable quick movement/combat. That will help keep you sane. Even with those on, a single game ends up about 3-5 hours for me. More if I go OC with my cities.

Only 3 hours? Tell me your secrets oh quick one! I'm playing a game right now that has lasted at least 7.

 

[LetalisK]

Here's a couple things I learned for a starter:

Play Japan first. How to effectively use your military is probably going to be the first thing you'll want to learn and Japan is more forgiving in this regard.

Ignore religion. It's not worth it, especially if you're not one of the Civs that starts out with the huge head start on founding one.

Unlike Civ4 where I would spread my cities like an infection across the land, Civ5 might be easier for you if you stick to having a handful of core cities you concentrate on. There is a "wide" strategy which is about having lots of little cities, but I think it's more of an advanced strategy thing.

 

[piinyouri]

I recently tried out the demo for this and as someone who really doesn't like the pace of RTS's, I have to say I'm kind of liking this.

Of course I have NO idea what I'm doing, but the games very helpful nature, playing around in-game and this thread have been very helpful.

I have to say, playing a game I'm this unfamiliar with really makes me respect and appreciate the aspects that I'm sure a lot of core fans of the series decried as "broadening the audience", "becoming casual" or "dumbing it down."

I love how the game has big help windows everywhere. It REALLY helps me to get my bearings. If this game was still super introverted, as in the devs just assumed everyone already knows most of everything, I probably wouldn't be able to get into this.

Right now I'm playing the persians (random first pick) and am trying to work on building a good cavalry.

Quick question, how many units does it typically take to take a city-state or city?

 

[aozgolo]

Small Continents is good for a nice quick start with minimal other countries directly at your border, mess around a lot with the custom start options but NEVER as a new player go with random personalities, it's better to know what a person is gonna do to you.


Personally I found the resource management to be the most challenging aspect of the game, trying to balance out the various factors to propel rapid development is kind of a chore and difficult to understand at first when you just wanna go explore, expand, and conquer.


Also research methods of naval travel fairly early, there's nothing worse than running out of land to explore only to find you can't go anywhere else because you have no sea travel yet.


Personally I found the challenge of the game to be a little too daunting, I prefer Warlock: Masters of the Arcane as a nice alternative, very identical gameplay with less micromanagement and more focus on exploration, expansion, and warfare (no happiness to worry about). Also it has spells you can cast directly on the map similar to Disciples. I dunno but I prefer Warlock over Civ V, probably because it has no real penalty for your preferred playstyle. I love to expand and have dozens of cities, but in Civ V that's pretty much more of a handicap than an asset.

 

[Vrach]

I played the demo quite a bit, so I'd like to think that I'm pretty familiar with the UI. I ask this because I have a feeling that Civ 5 is one of those games where you have to read a guide beforehand to know what exactly you're supposed to do.

Nah, you can figure out everything on the way really, any guidelines to follow would be too specific and since you're slowly developing through the ages, you get to analyze things one step at a time, so you're never really overwhelmed.

Good things to know in advance is that rivers are good (ie. building the city right next to a river), and while the sea doesn't suck, building a coastal city for anything but big strategic value or resources is generally balls, they're terrible at production. Also, get your hands on some Marble as soon as you can (starting with it is a HUGE advantage, stack it with one of the first social policies that speeds up Wonder production by 33%) because building those Wonders faster than your enemies is gonna be a big plus in the long term, most Wonders offer some really phenomenal buffs.

Also, don't hope for a long game. Just don't. If you want a really long game (post 450-500 turns, maybe even earlier, depending on your computer), just go for Civ III or IV. Civ V just can't handle it, in late game, you'll get crashes between turns (which take forever even when they don't crash due to terrible optimization of the AI, and well, everything else) and crashes upon trying to load a game. I've played a number of games trying to push it through to the end (I like playing pure domination where I eventually take control of the entire world by force) and around 500 turns, it just becomes impossible. Every turn takes about 10 minutes without a crash and an average of 20 with a crash.

 

[Drummodino]

Quick question, how many units does it typically take to take a city-state or city?

Depends greatly on the strength of the city, but you generally want at least 2-3 siege units with 2-3 infantry units to shield them/take the city when its health is low. Having a great general or two buffing your army will increase the effectiveness of your armies dramatically.

Rotating units out of the front line when they're wounded and replacing them with reinforcements will allow you to maintain a constant siege until victory is achieved.

Never use cavalry to attack a city as they receive a hefty penalty. They are great at roaming the countryside, harassing your enemy's armies. The AI generally isn't clever enough to stop you from doing this.

The same applies for attacking from the sea, generally want several ranged units (e.g. frigates) pounding down the city's health and then swooping in with a melee ship to claim it.

 

[Vrach]

Oh also, if you're gonna make a big sprawling empire, take India. Ghandi is one OP ************

And Ghandi as an enemy... well either finish the game before nukes are available or be prepared to witness one of the most nuke-obsessed peace leaders of all time. I'm not sure whether it was an ironic joke made by the developers or, more likely an error, but he's the most nuke-happy AI of all. People analyzed the game files and there's an attribute that decides how likely a leader is to use nukes. Everyone has a rating under 10. Ghandi has a motherfucking 12. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a 1, but they fucked up, but it could be that they were just being crazy

Spoiler: AI spreadsheet

 

[Adultism]

Don't trust anyone kill everything and take over the world. Pretty much the general idea of the game is to do that.

 

[WongKy]

don't trust anyone and build a strong army
and also build forts at the borders with other civilization

 

[Yopaz]

1.Prepare to not speak to any family members or friends for about a month.

Adding to this: Do not make plans at a Civ 5 day.

I was just going to test how well it would run and see if I liked it so I thought I'd give it a quick run. 8 hours later and what do you know? The day is GONE.

Also my advice is to go in blind. It's so much fun to learn by doing and make mistakes.

 

[Godlikebuthumble]

Actually, Nuclear Gandhi is a bug from CIV1 that became a feature in later games. As Vrach said, all leaders had stats for things like aggression, chance of using nukes, expansionism etc. Gandhi in CIV1 had nukes and aggression on 1 or 2 (most of the others were somewhere around the middle between 1-10). Then, adopting Democracy (along with bonuses to science et al.), reduced a players aggressiveness. But, due to a glitch in programming, Gandhi didn't go to -1, but to 255. So, he was a peaceful, if expansionist, player. Until he discovered Democracy and just started doing everything in his power to get nukes and use them. The devs were so amused by the idea of a genocidal Gandhi that they just stuck to it in later games.

OT: you cannot (and should not) be every AI's friend. As said earlier, befriend everyone once, then leave them to their own devices. Every civ is ever looking out for #1, and that is not you. They *will* eventually turn on you, whether that be by fighting, trying to beat you to a science/culture victory, or just being passive-aggressive douches and denouncing you every chance they get.
Do not expect gratitude for anything you do for them. In my last playthrough, I (as Bismarck) had the Netherlands and Sweden as neighbors. William of Orange was an uppity shit since the Classical Era, and Gustav Adolf was kinda hanging on to him, thinking him the safer bet (the fool). Then Babylon sweeped in from the east and took all but one city from the swedes while William watched. I decided not to wipe out the last Swedish colony (near my capital). When, 500 years later, I beat up the Netherlands and made them give me a former Swedish city William had taken from the Babylonians, I gave that back to the Swedes. Which only made them be even worse little shits.
Moral of the story: if you have something you don't need, burn it rather than giving it to someone else.

 

[Arrogancy]

A maxim I stand by when playing Civ is: "Early game warmongers lose late game wars." Unless you can trounce your enemy early on, which isn't a gamble you'd usually want to take, you'll spend too much time and resources building crap military units for the expense to make the war worthwhile.

 

[piinyouri]

Just a little thing I came across on the steam forums, greenmangaming is doing a voting thing and giving away one of two free games for voting, one of which is Civ 5.

Totally fucking awesome.

Anyway, I finished my demo 100 round limit for the persians and the egyptians. At this point I think I'm a builder/culture person. I found it far more fun than trying to amass an army.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

1.Trust nobody.

2.Really, trust nobody.

3.Take your time. There's no rush.

4.When you get a massive nation, have some Worker go into Auto mode. You can still micro manage, butit gets tedious.

5.Trust nobody. I say this so much because the diplomacy in this game isn't too deep and people fear you when you take over other countries, even if their not on the same continent.

6.Decide how you want to win the game early and work towards that.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

7. Never get into a research agreement with anyone on a lower plane than you. It doesn't help.

8.Honestly, eradicate civilizations that remains stupidly low tech. Like the Iroquois for example. Civs like them don't progress fast enough to be a major contender in the game. Take their land and use it better than they will be able to.

 

[piinyouri]

I'm a first time player and even I was leery about buddying up with anyone.

Whenever Bismark or Alexander came around I couldn't help but think "You're a computer, and I know how you bastards think. You're incapable of anything that doesn't pertain directly to your own survival. Be gone!"