Civ 5 demo was tough.

[shortylickens]

in a hundred turns I only conquered one barbarian horde and had all my troops wiped out by a pussy little city-state.
But it took forever to research cavalry and even then I still hadnt expanded enough to get any horses or good special resources.

 

[Via]

My butt still hurts from my two attempts at a HoMM3 game.

 

[CPA]

OMG you really suck at Civ 5. Civ 5 is the easiest out of the Civ games, at least early on.

 

[postmortemIA]

yeah, how do you lose from non-agressive city states? looks like you don't know how to use units or tech tree.

 

[shortylickens]

My butt still hurts from my two attempts at a HoMM3 game.

HoMM3 is easy once you figure things out. Ditto MOO2 and pretty much any other turn based strategy.

Civ 5 is probably no different, I just got to learn.

 

[Via]

HoMM3 is easy once you figure things out. Ditto MOO2 and pretty much any other turn based strategy.

Civ 5 is probably no different, I just got to learn.

In game 1 I was just figuring things out, so the result was predictable.

In game 2 I took my time, got all of the resources and towns, built up my army, and after a while the other guy still came with armies full of stuff I had no chance against.

He just blew me away.

 

[el-Capitan]

Yeah, don't attack the City States unless you know what you are doing.

 

[Balt]

Working through my first Civ V game now, though I actually bought it over a year ago I think. If I didn't have the difficulty set on an easy level, it would not be going well for me. Started the game surrounded by city-states with no access to horses or iron. So much for my old strategy of rapid early expansion.

I don't think I like having city-states in the game. Other than being a PITA, I'm not sure what purpose they serve.

 

[CPA]

So much for my old strategy of rapid early expansion.

Not a good strategy in Civ 5 due to maintenance costs, especially if you are going to connect your cities with roads.

 

[shortylickens]

Working through my first Civ V game now, though I actually bought it over a year ago I think. If I didn't have the difficulty set on an easy level, it would not be going well for me. Started the game surrounded by city-states with no access to horses or iron. So much for my old strategy of rapid early expansion.

I don't think I like having city-states in the game. Other than being a PITA, I'm not sure what purpose they serve.

If you suck up to them you can be allies and get neat stuff from them.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Not a good strategy in Civ 5 due to maintenance costs, especially if you are going to connect your cities with roads.

You gain a pretty nice sum of gold per turn for connecting cities, usually a decent amount more than the road maintenance costs, though that depends somewhat on how far your cities are apart. Also you are obviously going to lose a bit of money while the roads are being built. Usually your worker time is better spent on improvements for pretty much all of the early game anyways though. I often don't have any roads up at all during the BC's unless the cities are very close or there is some strategic need for it (i.e. need to move units between cities quickly to fend off aggressive neighbors and/or barbarians).

 

[frozentundra123456]

I really want to like Civ 5, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it either. At best I seem to just end up in a stalemate with nowhere to expand to without fighting, and that just drains your resources and armies terribly. Pretty much the same for the total war games.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Working through my first Civ V game now, though I actually bought it over a year ago I think. If I didn't have the difficulty set on an easy level, it would not be going well for me. Started the game surrounded by city-states with no access to horses or iron. So much for my old strategy of rapid early expansion.

I don't think I like having city-states in the game. Other than being a PITA, I'm not sure what purpose they serve.

Like shortylickens said, you can get bonuses from them if you please them (they randomly give out missions you can complete to gain favor with them) or provide them with gifts of gold/units (don't bother with units unless you are already planning to get rid of the unit, the favor you gain with them is far too small compared to the cost of the unit).

Being surrounded by city-states isn't the end of the world anyways. They provide a very nice buffer against AI civs who declare war on you (if you can get the city-state to 'ally' status, they will declare war on any of your enemies). Usually its a losing battle for the city-state, but you can either use that time to build up your own forces, or go fight with the city-state, using your combined forces to overcome a more powerful enemy.

Also, you can simply walk through city-state territory. It makes them angry if you aren't allied with them, but the anger wears off pretty quickly (it decays on its own over time), and you aren't likely to be able to afford to make them an ally in the early game anyways. City-states will never declare war on their own, so feel free to piss them off as much as you want if you don't foresee trying to make them an ally later in the game.

The bonuses, while usually quite small, can be very significant. Because of how modifiers work in Civ, you usually want to focus on a couple things and the means you fall behind in other areas. Every city-state bonus provides a very valuable type of resource. For instance, if you focus heavily on military, you may not have much time to build up your culture/faith infrastructure, but even a small amount of culture/faith can go a long way. Having a couple allied city states providing you with culture/faith helps make up that difference.

Theres a lot more to city-states, but I'd advise you not to turn them off until you get a better understanding of the game.

 

[PowerYoga]

aren't city states like... some of the strongest single cities? They're like fortresses that regenerate ridiculously quickly. I remember I had a really hard time taking them down no matter what difficulty level I play on unless I drastically out-tech them, and that usually doesn't happen.

 

[Firsttime]

Yeah. Don't touch city states early. Be their friends. Use them against the AI, or as buffer zones. Also make sure you aren't playing on Epic if you don't want really slow games.

 

[PowerYoga]

Even late game, city states will frequently just gift you their resources if you're friendly enough with them. Attacking them is like trying to take down helms deep: it's really really freaking difficult and you need a gigantic army.