DELETED

[Bostur]

Welp, first game of Civ and thus far here's how it's went down.

Playing Egypt and focus super hard on building wonders, getting as much culture as I can, with just a big enough army to protect myself.

Then out of nowhere, Nobunaga who was friendly about 10-20 turns ago, suddenly decides he doesn't like me. I try to pay hm off, as I just do not want to fight, at all. But it always wears off, and he comes nagging back.

So, rather pissed off, I flipped production around entirely and began pumping out siege units like crazy and forced my way into his country and blew his capital apart with cannons through sheer attrition.

I am now contemplating what's next.

When playing a civ with peaceful economic bonuses like Egypt, it often helps to have some army for diplomatic/defensive purposes even if you don't intend to attack anyone. When dealing with you the AI will take your army strength into account, so a moderate army can sometimes reduce their blackmailing attempts. Also the AI will gladly bluff to try to get some free stuff.
Sometimes giving the AI what it wants can be a helpful diplomatic tactic, sometimes it's futile.

The AI leaders can be backstabbing SOBs, but they mostly use that tactic if they have something to gain. Not being an easy target can be an effective counter.

When playing against Egypt I usually try to eliminate them as soon as possible. Getting their wonders is nice, but my main reason is to prevent them from spiralling out of control in the late game. Egypt can be incredibly strong when left alone. The AI civilizations seems to know that as well, so they play accordingly.

 

[piinyouri]

Final update for Egypt.
Pursued Japan into the corners of the map, slowly wiping them from existence. Nobunaga tried many times to offer peace but I let him know that his bed had already been made.

So once the red and white menace was eradicated I switched to full culture mode and just focused on building.
It was kind of boring, with a lot of time just spent burning through turns. No one else attacked me though, funny enough.

Eventually I got the utopia. I don't know if it's the nature of cultural victories, or the difficulty I had it set on, or if I just learned fast but it wasn't too terribly hard and kind of dull in the last half. I'll try for a cultural victory on a higher difficulty setting next time but for now I'll just keep it on chieftain and try out a domination run, then a science and diplomacy one.

Are the DLC's worth getting?

 

[wintercoat]

My first completed map, I decided to have a bit of fun and build only my capital. It was a standard size map, continents, and I was playing on Warlord with Gandhi, so a normal, leaning towards easy, game. I got to the mid-1980s before Harun al-Rashid won a Diplomatic victory. I was only a couple dozen turns from a culture victory, too.

Being right next to Queen Elizabeth didn't help me any, let me tell you. ***** wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. And Montezuma was just the stupidest idiot ever. He kept making war with Genghis Khan, Elizabeth, and me. Hell, he's directly responsible for my survival at one point. Idiot decided to launch an attack on me while I was besieged by Elizabeth, and she decided to turn around and ***** slap the idiot away. Gave me a bit of time to recover. Genghis was my bro, though. Dude was friendly the entire game.

Oh, but poor Genghis. Just completed the Manhattan Project the turn before Harud won. Was so eager to see if he was going to nuke Montezuma. They were right next to each other, and Montezuma harassed him the entire match. Would've been hilarious.

Washington was a bit of an ass, but he was all bluster. Never actually attacked me, or came close to Delhi.

Didn't have much contact with Caesar or Askia, but they were wiped out by the end I believe. I know Askia was, but I don't remember who the second one was. I believe it was Caesar.

To be fair, though, I was lucky in my placement of my capital. I was in a great place on the north side of a peninsula, right up against the sea, and there were two city-states blocking off the area where me and Queen Elizabeth were, so enemies had a hard time getting to us. With all of the defensive buildings, I was at over 60 city strength by the end, so attacks from most sources did only 1 damage, sometimes 2, and I could outlast attacks long enough to broker for peace.

Speaking of Elizabeth, fuck English Longbowmen. Stupid goddam 3-tile range.

Whenever I build more than one or two cities, I end up with shit-tons of unhappiness, and I can never keep up. I make trade agreements and ally with city-states for luxuries I can't get myself, I build every happiness increasing building I can, I hunt down Natural Wonders, I take policies that give happiness bonuses and I still end up in the red. Am I expanding too quickly or too much or something? What can I do to keep happiness in the positive? It's the only reason that game was the only one I've finished. The little shits whine and complain, and trying to make them happy hampers my ability to make military units to defend myself because I'm too busy building opera houses and theaters and shit like that, and then I get steamrolled by assholes taunting me about how unhappy my citizens are.

 

[Bostur]

Eventually I got the utopia. I don't know if it's the nature of cultural victories, or the difficulty I had it set on, or if I just learned fast but it wasn't too terribly hard and kind of dull in the last half. I'll try for a cultural victory on a higher difficulty setting next time but for now I'll just keep it on chieftain and try out a domination run, then a science and diplomacy one.

It's a general trend in the Civilization series that the late game can become prolonged. It does help to play on a higher difficulty setting, because that may force you into wars to avoid losing. The lowest level does give you a significant economic bonus. If you feel confident with the basic mechanics try setting the difficulty on the medium level. On the medium level the AIs and the player will be on even terms without economic advantages. On higher settings the AI will get an advantage.

If specific elements of the game feels to easy, there is also plenty of options to make things more interesting. I tend to turn off diplomatic victories, because I feel that the AI is not good enough to prevent that. Other common options is to reduce the number of city states to reduce micromanagement, or to play on smaller maps or speed up the game speed.

Are the DLC's worth getting?

I think the Brave New World expansion makes for the best Civ 5 experience. As far as I know you can skip the second expansion "Gods and Kings" and install BNW with the base game.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I will just say that once, I decided to play a game with all the women leaders and only the women leaders... I had to quit the game because everyone hated each other so much everyone was at war with each other. It was insane.

On that note, never, EVER trust China. If they or Montezuma are in a game with me, I know I have to build up my military quickly. Also, England can get pretty nasty, because she'll build cities near you and call you a dick for being too close to her.

This is also why I play on maps with Islands... a few strategically placed archers/ranged in forts and in cities, and no one can beat you.

I also have mods in so the game doesn't go past the midieval era, though, because I don't enjoy the game after guns are developed.

When I play, I usually play as Catherine so I can get double horses, iron, etc. This way I can easily set up trade agreements with other Civs for things they actually want and it gives me a slight bit more of a safety cushion with them. Usually if I give Alexander some horses early on, he's my buddy through the end. And I also try and keep up deals with my neighbours. If they don't renew the agreement, something might be up. That and the Krepost is a nice little thing. Extra experience baracks, basically.

 

[gorfias]

My advice? Put it on the easiest difficulty and just play. You will learn as you go on. It is pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

Did you bother with tutorials, or would you advise, just go for it!

I've gotten a number of such games cheap and fall asleep during tutorials so I haven't gotten far in any of them!

Civilization 4 and 5
Sim City 4
Shogun 2
Cities XL Platinum
Sims 3 with Expansions
Edit: Tropico 3 and 4

To name a few. Gotta get on those!

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Final update for Egypt.
Pursued Japan into the corners of the map, slowly wiping them from existence. Nobunaga tried many times to offer peace but I let him know that his bed had already been made.

So once the red and white menace was eradicated I switched to full culture mode and just focused on building.
It was kind of boring, with a lot of time just spent burning through turns. No one else attacked me though, funny enough.

Eventually I got the utopia. I don't know if it's the nature of cultural victories, or the difficulty I had it set on, or if I just learned fast but it wasn't too terribly hard and kind of dull in the last half. I'll try for a cultural victory on a higher difficulty setting next time but for now I'll just keep it on chieftain and try out a domination run, then a science and diplomacy one.

Are the DLC's worth getting?

They add variety to the civilization choice, and I think a couple of them add wonders. Worth it if you enjoy the game and play a lot.

What difficulty was this on, btw?

 

[The_Lost_King]

My advice? Put it on the easiest difficulty and just play. You will learn as you go on. It is pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

Did you bother with tutorials, or would you advise, just go for it!

I've gotten a number of such games cheap and fall asleep during tutorials so I haven't gotten far in any of them!

Civilization 4 and 5
Sim City 4
Shogun 2
Cities XL Platinum
Sims 3 with Expansions
Edit: Tropico 3 and 4

To name a few. Gotta get on those!

Well I played Civ IV before so I knew the basics. Though, my friend went into it without a tutorial and only a little help from me and it is not complicated at all. I think you should be able to do it without the tutorial. Especially since it just brings you to the required screen when something is done.

 

[gorfias]

my friend went into it without a tutorial and only a little help from me and it is not complicated at all. I think you should be able to do it without the tutorial. Especially since it just brings you to the required screen when something is done.

Cool! And of those on my list, I'm thinking this will be the most fun and intuitive. I will get to it ASAP!

 

[piinyouri]

Final update for Egypt.
Pursued Japan into the corners of the map, slowly wiping them from existence. Nobunaga tried many times to offer peace but I let him know that his bed had already been made.

So once the red and white menace was eradicated I switched to full culture mode and just focused on building.
It was kind of boring, with a lot of time just spent burning through turns. No one else attacked me though, funny enough.

Eventually I got the utopia. I don't know if it's the nature of cultural victories, or the difficulty I had it set on, or if I just learned fast but it wasn't too terribly hard and kind of dull in the last half. I'll try for a cultural victory on a higher difficulty setting next time but for now I'll just keep it on chieftain and try out a domination run, then a science and diplomacy one.

Are the DLC's worth getting?

They add variety to the civilization choice, and I think a couple of them add wonders. Worth it if you enjoy the game and play a lot.

What difficulty was this on, btw?

Chieftain.


@Bostur
Yeah I'll change somethings around to make it more difficult next time for sure.
Does BNW come with G&K or are you saying G&K just isn't worth it?
Truth be told I'll probably end up getting G&K anyway since some mods I want real bad are dependent on it.

 

[ThatQuietGuy]

Don't bothering trying to be friends with adjacent empires, close borders is going to cause war sooner or later so it's easier to just be hostile or at least passive aggressive to your neighbors from the get go.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Chieftain.

@Bostur
Yeah I'll change somethings around to make it more difficult next time for sure.
Does BNW come with G&K or are you saying G&K just isn't worth it?
Truth be told I'll probably end up getting G&K anyway since some mods I want real bad are dependent on it.

Bump that up to Prince for your next game. It's the "normal" difficulty, with minimal AI crutches. Anything past that and you're going to deal with excessively flagrant AI cheating. Which is not to say Prince is a good difficulty level...it's ludicrously easy. The AI is very, very poorly equipped to deal with a human player. But if you dislike AI shenanigans, then Prince is as high as you can go without the AI swimming in shady bonuses.

Gods and Kings and Brave New World aren't just worth it, they're borderline necessary to have a decent experience. Vanilla Civ V had a lot of holes, which G&K and BNW largely spackle over. One significantly improves the middle game, the other beefs up the often sluggish/boring late game. Both should be considered essential.

And for some reason I think BNW DOES contain Gods and Kings, but I'm not 100% certain.

One thing to remember in addition to Frankster's note that same-victory-type civs will hate you if you're pursuing (and dominating) the same goals as them...the AI does not play a simulated world community. It plays like a (very stupid) human player would play...to win the game. If you are looking like a genuine threat to win the game, you will find enemies under every rock. This is the culprit behind the "insane AI aggressiveness" that is a hallmark of the series, when boon friends are suddenly sharpening their knives with no provocation. Everyone hates a front runner.

As you have self-identified as a builder/culture type as opposed to a warmonger (fist bump, me too), you'll want to focus on building small/tall Empires. A few large cities (4-5 maximum), placed in optimal expansion spots. India is a perfect civilization for this, and you've already tried the penultimate wonder-spammers, the Egyptians. The Shoshone (Brave New World civ) are also a very strong "builder" civ who can snowball early. Rapid expansion (past the 4-5 city limit, rapid expansion TO that limit is HIGHLY DESIRABLE) and large sprawling empires are DEATH for cultural civs, and painful for science civs as well post BNW. Resit the urge. If you grab an enemy city, give it away to an ally to curry favor.

Look for salt and marble for early luxuries, particularly salt (salt starts are OP). Always look to start on a hill...there is literally ZERO benefit to not founding your first city on a hill. And fill out Tradition early.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask. I have HUNDREDS of hours sunk into that bloody game.