I tried Civ4; I sucked. Trying Civ5 because it's supposed to be easy...

[rga]

...but I don't even have a clue about what's going on in the tutorial. Are there some basic strategies that anybody can help me out with.

I could Google stratgeies, I suppose, but I 'll have more accountability if people know I suck at a game that apprently has such shitty AI.

For example, when I start a game, I have a bunch of warriors and a group of guys that will start building a town. Should I start building a town and explore with the other group?

I'm seriously not trolling, I'm overwhelmed by this game. lol

 

[Anteaus]

It's about multitasking. You want to get your first city up ASAP, but at the same time start exploring. Since your city can be invaded by barbarians, you don't want to stray too far with your warrior early on. Build another battle unit to fortify at your city for protection and after that it's all in how you want to play. Pay attention to which social policies you adopt early on as they can affect the speed in which you expand and how you generally chose to play.

It's also a good idea to get at least one worker developing your land. You can just put it on auto until you get a better idea about what your doing.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

It's pretty complicated and if you are short on patience and time look elsewhere.

 

[Craig234]

Experiment. Ya, at the beginning, one explorer, one worker on auto, then one defender...

The game does offer suggestions that help. IMO 5 does seem easier to get into.

 

[Born2bwire]

What I usually do is build a worker first and then research to exploit the resources that are nearby, emphasis given to agricultural. That way, once the worker is ready, it can go right to improving your agricultural tiles which will give a great boost to your population growth (fishing boats are great early on too). Then I build warriors or scouts to explore (and I explore in a circular motion so that I can find the first few spots nearby to expand to). Once I have a pop around 4, I build my settler and continue on from there. I also reserve a warrior to accompany or at least watch over the path to the next city. On the easier settings, it is easier to get a dominance in religions to help boost your culture. If you start off going for monotheism, you'll probably get it first (especially if you start with a religious culture like the Egyptians). Like others have said, it takes practice. I can win at Prince on Civ 4 and I am working on Noble for BTS expansion. I don't think I can get any better unless I start to micromanage and aggressively preplan my cities. So I think that you can continue to win and play up to Noble by just going off the cuff.

I think once you have a basic understanding for the game, you'll find the easiest difficulty to be child's play. But you have to play through a few games to really get an idea of how to proceed without causing artificial stalls in your progress.

 

[JamesV]

...
I'm seriously not trolling, I'm overwhelmed by this game. lol

...

(for those who have played both versions for hundreds of hours, does that sentence, and more importantly the title of the post make sense)? You've been had - troll hating on Civ 5 post with a flair for writing.

Prove me wrong, or better yet continue on for my amusement.

 

[rga]

I don't know what to say. I asked a few months ago if I should buy Civ 4 or 5 - you can search for the post. Everybody suggested 4, and it was on sale at the time, so I bought it. I got lost in within a few turns. Never played it again. Civ 5 went on sale for like $7.99 on Steam about a week or so ago, so I bought it because I read a lot of posts on here about howstupid the AI was, and how easy it was to play. This is my first full weekend off work, so I decided to finally give it a try.

My most recent game had my team called Songhai, and the map was really small. I ran into Germany, and had the option to ally or declare war againt or to do nothing against Bismark. I did nothing. I sent my warriors out to explore; I built a worker; I bought two tiles; I picked a social policy - can't remember the name off the top of my head - that is supposed to allow a city expand quicly. When my worker was done, I moved on to grainery; it's what my military and economic adiversers advised.

I'm gonna try again. I've wanted a decent turned based game to play for a while. I prefer RPG, but I think I can handle this eventually.

 

[Gordon Freemen]

I don't know what to say. I asked a few months ago if I should buy Civ 4 or 5 - you can search for the post. Everybody suggested 4, and it was on sale at the time, so I bought it. I got lost in within a few turns. Never played it again. Civ 5 went on sale for like $7.99 on Steam about a week or so ago, so I bought it because I read a lot of posts on here about howstupid the AI was, and how easy it was to play. This is my first full weekend off work, so I decided to finally give it a try.

My most recent game had my team called Songhai, and the map was really small. I ran into Germany, and had the option to ally or declare war againt or to do nothing against Bismark. I did nothing. I sent my warriors out to explore; I built a worker; I bought two tiles; I picked a social policy - can't remember the name off the top of my head - that is supposed to allow a city expand quicly. When my worker was done, I moved on to grainery; it's what my military and economic adiversers advised.

I'm gonna try again. I've wanted a decent turned based game to play for a while. I prefer RPG, but I think I can handle this eventually.

Enjoy the Weekend mate !

 

[postmortemIA]

you'll need to read game manual, believe or not.

other than that, civ fanatics community website has several articles on various topics.

 

[n7]

you'll need to read game manual, believe or not.

other than that, civ fanatics community website has several articles on various topics.

Yeah, i was lost when i first started too.
Those forums are where i spend a LOT of time reading even now.

It's easy to play the game, but hard to get good.

Once you have a basic understanding of the concepts you'll want to move up to Prince difficulty.

Don't stay at the really low difficulties once you understand how to play as you'll learn bad habits that you cannot do successfully at the normal difficulties (Prince+).

 

[frozentundra123456]

...

(for those who have played both versions for hundreds of hours, does that sentence, and more importantly the title of the post make sense)? You've been had - troll hating on Civ 5 post with a flair for writing.

Prove me wrong, or better yet continue on for my amusement.

I have tried the game and I could never get the hang of it either, so I can see that the op could be serious. And that was civil 5, supposedly the easy one.

 

[Gibsons]

Yeah, i was lost when i first started too.
Those forums are where i spend a LOT of time reading even now.

It's easy to play the game, but hard to get good.

Once you have a basic understanding of the concepts you'll want to move up to Prince difficulty.

Don't stay at the really low difficulties once you understand how to play as you'll learn bad habits that you cannot do successfully at the normal difficulties (Prince+).

Is Prince where all of a sudden you have to use the income slider? I remember that being a major change in gameplay.

One sort of early tactic - set up one of your first ~5 cities as a settler factory. Needs to be one with a food resource. Have it concentrate, maybe exclusively, on settlers for a while.

 

[postmortemIA]

building cities everywhere was good approach in Civ III, as AI would build cities anywhere it can, but on Civ IV and Civ V there's huge cost for each new city. In Civ IV every new city costs a lot of money, so it forces you to reduce research if you have large number of cities that don't support them selves. In Civ V they cost happiness, so if you build too many, you will have problem keeping your empire happy.

 

[n7]

Is Prince where all of a sudden you have to use the income slider? I remember that being a major change in gameplay.

One sort of early tactic - set up one of your first ~5 cities as a settler factory. Needs to be one with a food resource. Have it concentrate, maybe exclusively, on settlers for a while.

Income slider? No such thing in Civ5.

You'll generally want to produce settlers from your capital.
Production (hammers) boosts the speed of building them, not food though.

In the Liberty social policy tree there is a policy called Collective Rule that gives you a free Settler, and boosts production of your settlers in the capital by 50%.
Right now Liberty is by far the strongest early game tree so that tends to be the way to go in most games.
I am hoping G&K boosts Tradition and Honor to make them just as good as myself and many others are tired of usually doing Liberty.


I think the biggest issue i have with Civ5 is how cookie cutter you have to play to do well at the hardest difficulties...

 

[Gibsons]

Income slider? No such thing in Civ5.

I thought we were talking about civ4..? ohwell.

 

[DigDog]

Civ 5 is so easy, it's childish.

 

[Wardawg1001]

Civ 5 is not easy for someone who doesn't know what they are doing. It gained a reputation for being easy because there are many simple game mechanics people figured out how to abuse very quickly. For instance I was never that great at Civ 4, but I managed to beat Civ 5 on Immortal (with a very early win) after only a few days by abusing a particularly powerful early game unit.

For a complete newbie to the series and genre, there is a lot to absorb and its still very easy to get lost in all the various mechanics and sub-systems. As others have suggested already, head over to CivFanatics, it is the single most useful source of combined knowledge on all things Civ related.

 

[Born2bwire]

Income slider? No such thing in Civ5.

You'll generally want to produce settlers from your capital.
Production (hammers) boosts the speed of building them, not food though.

In the Liberty social policy tree there is a policy called Collective Rule that gives you a free Settler, and boosts production of your settlers in the capital by 50%.
Right now Liberty is by far the strongest early game tree so that tends to be the way to go in most games.
I am hoping G&K boosts Tradition and Honor to make them just as good as myself and many others are tired of usually doing Liberty.


I think the biggest issue i have with Civ5 is how cookie cutter you have to play to do well at the hardest difficulties...

We're talking about Civ 4.

The production of settlers uses the sum of your food and hammer production. They both count equally so it doesn't matter if you maximize food or production.

 

[DigDog]

while we're at it, why is it that in 5 you can use a resource only once? who thought that up?

 

[Wardawg1001]

while we're at it, why is it that in 5 you can use a resource only once? who thought that up?

You don't get to use it only once, you just have a limited amount (I assume you are talking about strategic resources, such as horses and iron). So if you have 4 iron, you can have 4 units that use iron active at any given time. It adds some strategy because now there is a benefit to controlling multiple resource plots (in Civ 4, extra resources are good for nothing but trading), and it forces you to use those resources carefully instead of spam building 50 swords the minute you get access to iron. Also, if you use more of a resource than you have available (6 units using iron, but you only have 4 iron in your possession), those units all become weakened until you obtain more iron or you lose a sufficient amount of units. This opens up strategies like plundering an enemies strategic resource to weaken their powerful units. Some of this becomes moot at some point due to 1 unit per square, but overall it adds a lot of depth.

EDIT: Just to be clear, if you have 4 iron and 4 swordsmen, if they die you can then re-use the iron, it is not lost forever.

 

[Sulaco]

If you're going to the trouble to read the manual anyway, and research online articles to get better at the game, why not just do that with Civ IV?

You'll have a VASTLY better game to play in the end, that's really no "harder", just doesn't give you bunch of bullshit "gamey" loopholes and AI retardation that makes it seem easier.

 

[turn_pike]

Reposting this because I was being an idiot and posted this thing on Civ -5- thread :

The problem with Civ4 is that at higher difficulty (BTS --> Prince and above) you need to constantly wage war to expand or you -will- get behind. The AI get so many bonus, its not even funny. It makes the game kinda formulaic to be honest, you have to trade tech and wage war or you die. I now prefer playing Paradox's grand strategy games.

Some basic strategies that I used to utilize might be useful to you :
- Build your city in the first 2 turns (Usually the tile you start with is good enough).
- Build a worker unless your city will grow real soon (in which case build a warrior / barrack until your city grew and then switch to worker)
- Explore with your warrior. Scout good locations for your second city. IF you happen to find another Civ, see if you can attack and steal their worker because at higher difficulty they start with one worker. It would be a -huge- boost to your economy. Try to stay in forest / hill to improve your defense against those pesky barbarians / animals.
- Improve the resources, prioritize food because we want the city to grow ASAP. Another way is to research Bronze Working and chop wood with worker to create Settler.
- After food, prioritize having a strategic resource that increases your combat power : Bronze, Ivory or Horses. You need at least one of these resources or you will not be competitive.
- Build your second city (protect it with an archer / axeman)
- If there is a civilization nearby, try to conquer it. You need to constantly do this or you will get behind.
- Tech up to Alphabet real fast and TRADE TECH before AI can do it. They research at like twice your speed so you have to trade.
- Whenever you get a new tech that gives you a good / unique combat unit then its usually time to prepare for war.
- Be friendly to one or two relatively strong Civilization. You cant afford to be ostracized, they will gang up on you.

 

[DigDog]

yeah i did make it that far. the point is that once i have an iron mine, i ought to be able to get iron out of it :/ no sense holding it after the unit is out.

we're talking mechs here...

oh yeah and ignore friendly cities, always raze enemy cities.

 

[rstove02]

I'm seriously not trolling, I'm overwhelmed by this game. lol

The main thing I like about the Civ line in general is that is shows proof that games can be rewarding without having crosshairs and triggers.

 

[lupi]

I wouldn't necessarily say 5 is easier, it is more about knowing the strategy behind playing 4. Prior to 5, the dev team tried varies things to punish players trying the city glob strategy so you had to know about developing the proper ratio of specialized cities.