Alright boyz, here we go!!! Civ 5 first impressions & tips thread!

[Tasan]

Izulde, I'm right there with you. I played the demo and its all I can do to not spend the $50 on the full game.

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Galaril

Geez, played first game about 4 hours on standard map on the third level Chieftain I think with 10 city-states, ab undant resources and continents. I was America and quickly built three cities got them up and running and got them all linked with roads. I played peaceful not attacking anyone just so I could grow and that worked good until 1220 AD when damn Russia a real war monger that had been in a long 500 year long confrontation with German who we had sided with alittle attacked us. When she attacked she really brought. Russia attacked two of our cities including the capital with a couple units each and I had not seen it coming so I have very little combat units to battle them. I guess I will be firing up the war machine to deal with this threat. One question:We had just started sending out ships to navigate the oceans and found some new lands owned by France who we traded with. I am not sure if we immediately get those resources for our empire or if we have to get the ship back to one of our maritime cities for it to kick in?

So, I was going to quit and restart but decided to stick my first game out and have now recovered and survived the attacks from Russia. I have started to focus on technology more and am now fielding Minutemen and cannons and have just about completed the Rifling tech which will give me riflemen think 19th century. I am in 1680 so am ahead of everyone else. I lost my one northern city on a peninsula to Russia who razed the city. I still have three large well defended cities and one small growing one on a far distant continent across the oceans.

A few things I have noticed:
-If you build forts and do not quickly occupy them with combat troops another nation will claim them. Also, you can build forts anywhere you want not just in your territory but be careful. I built two forts just outside my territory and another nation sent settlers and built cities right near them thus when the fort was done it was that nation property damn.
-One thing that I don't like about units being able to change to transport ships from land is you can not trap units at the a sea unless you blockade the ocean as well. I guess that is realistic.
-I am playing in the third AI level and the AI is decent.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Galaril

-I am playing in the third AI level and the AI is decent.

Interesting. I have just been playing around, noticing a lot of fixable bugs, but will not play for real until the first patch or two. Way too many examples (and some personal examples) of an inept tactical AI, esp. in the first 150 turns on normal. An outnumbered, inferior defense can easily hold off much larger superior units because the AI do not know how to use 1upt well, esp. range and embarking attacks. You can use Zone of Control much, much better than the AI can.

Going on the offense in the early game, take 3 range units and 3 ground units (like Swords) plus a worker or scout and see how many civs you take out, even at higher difficulty levels. Problem is that it is easy to draw them out piecemeal (with the worker, for exampe) to slaughter. In the first 100-150 turns, you will encounter nearly defenseless AI cities: 2-3 weak units in each.

Promotions come fast and easy since you get good points just standing around while a few arrows fly at you, not to mention really good points in attacking. Since you will have less units (and can move them better), promotions become very powerful, esp. when the unit is upgraded and do not lose them. Some suggested that playing on huge maps will help slow down the pace but many cannot get huge maps to work without crashing.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Interesting. I have just been playing around, noticing a lot of fixable bugs, but will not play for real until the first patch or two. Way too many examples (and some personal examples) of an inept tactical AI, esp. in the first 150 turns on normal. An outnumbered, inferior defense can easily hold off much larger superior units because the AI do not know how to use 1upt well, esp. range and embarking attacks. You can use Zone of Control much, much better than the AI can.

Going on the offense in the early game, take 3 range units and 3 ground units (like Swords) plus a worker or scout and see how many civs you take out, even at higher difficulty levels. Problem is that it is easy to draw them out piecemeal (with the worker, for exampe) to slaughter. In the first 100-150 turns, you will encounter nearly defenseless AI cities: 2-3 weak units in each.

Promotions come fast and easy since you get good points just standing around while a few arrows fly at you, not to mention really good points in attacking. Since you will have less units (and can move them better), promotions become very powerful, esp. when the unit is upgraded and do not lose them. Some suggested that playing on huge maps will help slow down the pace but many cannot get huge maps to work without crashing.

I've played a couple games on huge maps in strategy view with no crashes.

For some reason the game likes to crash whenever I quit, though. That's funny.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I haven't tried it yet on it. I'm just assuming so. It's a month or two old, 4GB RAM, dual core, not sure about the graphics setup, but it *looks* good. I'm going to do the installation on it tomorrow morning.

Originally Posted by tyketime

Runs perfectly well on my desktop. Not so much on my "souped-up laptop". What kind of specs does your laptop have that allows it to run? Do you run it in DirectX v9 or v10/11?

Forgot to check back in. It works fine on her laptop, v10/11. Played it some on the plane and a good bit last night.

[Ben E Lou]

Hmmmm..yeah, I've played nothing but huge maps. Other than the crash I was getting when I first tried to run, I haven't gotten those.

[Lonnie]

I just finished a huge earth map game where I won the Diplomatic race as Rome. I played at prince level and leaned on city states heavily.

I was crashing frequently in the last 100 years or so usually when the view swung across the globe to another unit. The graphics would just freeze. However, I was determined to finish it so I just cranked the graphics all the way down and saved every turn.

I was positioned in the Egypt area at the start so I build along the Nile. The game ran fine until I started exploring the Oceans and scouted out the Americas. I guess it was just too much for my setup. Think I'll stick with standard size maps for a while.

[MizzouRah]

I had a crash last night when playing a tutorial, the screen went black, but I could see my cursor.. had to cntl-alt-del and come back - been fine since.

[Galaril]

I can not get the game to play anything but Direct x 9 though I am above recommended specs. Bummer.

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Interesting. I have just been playing around, noticing a lot of fixable bugs, but will not play for real until the first patch or two. Way too many examples (and some personal examples) of an inept tactical AI, esp. in the first 150 turns on normal. An outnumbered, inferior defense can easily hold off much larger superior units because the AI do not know how to use 1upt well, esp. range and embarking attacks. You can use Zone of Control much, much better than the AI can.

Going on the offense in the early game, take 3 range units and 3 ground units (like Swords) plus a worker or scout and see how many civs you take out, even at higher difficulty levels. Problem is that it is easy to draw them out piecemeal (with the worker, for example) to slaughter. In the first 100-150 turns, you will encounter nearly defenseless AI cities: 2-3 weak units in each.

Promotions come fast and easy since you get good points just standing around while a few arrows fly at you, not to mention really good points in attacking. Since you will have less units (and can move them better), promotions become very powerful, esp. when the unit is upgraded and do not lose them. Some suggested that playing on huge maps will help slow down the pace but many cannot get huge maps to work without crashing.

I agree promotions needed to be made less powerful or AI needs to be ramped up to account for it. As you mentioned another option might be to make promotions less easy to get. I had a group of minutemen get created we march across a allies territory and we got a promotion.LOL.

and This

In the first 100-150 turns, you will encounter nearly defenseless AI cities: 2-3 weak units in each.

You just described all of my early cities until about 1000 AD.

[Cringer]

I have played nothing other then huge maps and have been fine, D x 10/11 on my laptop with an i5 and Intel integrated graphics.

[Galaril]

Then it has to be a vista 64 issue.

[Lonnie]

I am running Win 7 64 myself. It might just a be a 64 bit problem.

[Alan T]

After a few games this weekend, I personally find the whole "You don't need as much expansion to do well" to not be that true. In Civ 5, I can still do well with only 3 cities, but I easily do far better with more cities and resources.

As long as you build happiness buildings to keep up with the expansion, the only limiting factor becomes money. You have to be a bit more cautious about what you build to make sure you can afford it is all.

[chesapeake]

My experience appears to be more like yours, Alan. In my current game, (Standard, Continents, Prince) I am Rome and my first 2 neighbors have already been crushed under the boots of my 5 legions. As long as I keep my happiness in the low negatives, I don't seem to be having any troubles. I'm debating whether to pause the warmongering until I can annex my last 2 Japanese puppet cities or to just roll through Babylon's 3 cities next. I'm leaning towards warmongering.

[Big Fo]

Yeah. Although having a large empire means you can find it harder to keep the people happy and acquire new social policies, the edge you get in researching and production seems to outweigh that.

I don't know how many of you guys play the Europa Universalis games but in that series the amount of gold (would be beakers in Civ) it takes to research a new technology is higher for bigger nations, I think something like that would work well for Civ 5 to make having a small or medium sized empire more attractive.

And while I don't miss religion, espionage, or corporations I do miss vassals. If I found a number of cities on a new continent I'd like to have the option of letting them go in order to reduce costs while remaining allies. And the same goes for when I take a few opposition cities, I know they can be rules as puppets but they will build expensive city improvements that don't help much, seemingly won't build work boats to take advantage of pearls/whales like an AI Civ would, or defend themselves. It'd be nice to leave them in the game but as vassals, I don't really like razing cities unless they are in really bad spots and you can't raze cities that were originally capitals anyway.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by chesapeake

My experience appears to be more like yours, Alan. In my current game, (Standard, Continents, Prince) I am Rome and my first 2 neighbors have already been crushed under the boots of my 5 legions. As long as I keep my happiness in the low negatives, I don't seem to be having any troubles. I'm debating whether to pause the warmongering until I can annex my last 2 Japanese puppet cities or to just roll through Babylon's 3 cities next. I'm leaning towards warmongering.

Don't annex if you are in the low negatives, just keep rolling.

One of the key strategies is to be really friendly with a Maritime city-state. That way they can provide your empire with plenty of food while you concentrate on better things.

Fo, I don't miss those things either but I think alliance with city-states took the place of vassals. That is something the AI understands (marginally) as well. It just doesn't know how to do 1upt or diplomacy, which were the two things I feared when I first heard about them. Diplomacy they can improve just by having the AI value things far more important instead of offering everything to you when they want peace. I'm not confident on 1upt since the AI could not fight well with something as easy as SoD in Civ4, how does one expect them to handle something more complex? I fear that they will simply give the AI a +33% combat bonus to make up for it.

[Buccaneer]

1.0.0.20 patch has been released. Making baby steps in the right direction...

Modding - Installer and permissions fixes. Should address any
remaining mod download and install issues.
Full screen crash fix. Game will now restart in Windowed mode if
it cannot find a suitable full-screen resolution on first start.
Hall of Fame now records data correctly when using a Windows
username with special characters.
Deal expiration fixes.
Fix for Puppet State production exploit.
Misc crash fixes.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by Lonnie

I am running Win 7 64 myself. It might just a be a 64 bit problem.

Win 7 64 bit on mine. Probably not as simple as that because I have no problems as I stated above.

[PraetorianX]

Enjoying the game so far, but I noticed something odd after I conquered Belgrade.

Belgrade is located on the coast at the very south of the continent (Pangaea) and the only reason I conquered it was that it was located on a narrow pass that led to the other side of the coast and a nice deposit of coal. The damned Siamese are to my north-east so I can't get to the coast that way. There is a big mountain range between Belgrade and Siam.

Anyway so I conquered Belgrade and moved a couple of settlers to go put down a couple of cities on the slim, but rather mineral rich, sliver of land along the east coast.

I wanted to build a workboat as there are some pearls by Belgrade...but I ran into a problem. Despite being along the coast, apparently Belgrade is not coastal. I can't build any ships or anything like a harbour. I can't figure out what the problem is.

I also can't get any work boats over to it because it's cut off by ice in each direction.

Anybody have any idea what the problem is?

[SackAttack]

There's just something amusing about playing as the Indians and conquering the French before the birth of Christ.

Also sneaky how when they offered their capitulative peace treaty - all their gold and resources - they tried to sneak an open borders arrangement in there.

[bhlloy]

Originally Posted by PraetorianX

I also can't get any work boats over to it because it's cut off by ice in each direction.

Anybody have any idea what the problem is?

I'm guessing this might be the problem - because it doesn't have open access to the ocean/any of your other cities via the ocean the game doesn't consider it a coastal city?

[Chubby]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

There's just something amusing about playing as the Indians and conquering the French before the birth of Christ.

Also sneaky how when they offered their capitulative peace treaty - all their gold and resources - they tried to sneak an open borders arrangement in there.

When I got offered that I was allowed into their borders but I did not allow them into mine, just because one side has open borders does not mean both do anymore

[PraetorianX]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

I'm guessing this might be the problem - because it doesn't have open access to the ocean/any of your other cities via the ocean the game doesn't consider it a coastal city?

All the seazones in front of Belgrade are open, the ice is several spaces off in each direction.

[MizzouRah]

I haven't played all that much yet, but what does buying tiles do besides expand your city?

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

I haven't played all that much yet, but what does buying tiles do besides expand your city?

Lets you instantly expand your city without having to wait on culture but for a price. Useful in grabbing a strategic or luxury resource before someone else can grab it, or for cutting off another civ's access to a different part of land.

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Chubby

When I got offered that I was allowed into their borders but I did not allow them into mine, just because one side has open borders does not mean both do anymore

Oh - I guess only if both sides offer it?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Lets you instantly expand your city without having to wait on culture but for a price. Useful in grabbing a strategic or luxury resource before someone else can grab it, or for cutting off another civ's access to a different part of land.

Ahhh. ok.. so if there is a resource I want, I should buy it up?

Do you find yourself buying tiles when you have the money?

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Ahhh. ok.. so if there is a resource I want, I should buy it up?

Do you find yourself buying tiles when you have the money?

One thing I'd like to know - can the growth of a city usurp tiles (edit: er, still usurp, that is) that other cities had been using? If they aren't being worked, for example?

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Ahhh. ok.. so if there is a resource I want, I should buy it up?

Do you find yourself buying tiles when you have the money?

Early in the game, absolutely. 50-55 gold is a bargain compared to bringing in a key resource. You can only work out to 3 tiles and it does get expensive further out. After buying a tile or two, I save my early money for city-states.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by PraetorianX

All the seazones in front of Belgrade are open, the ice is several spaces off in each direction.

Double-check that the coast hexes are not ocean?

[Abe Sargent]

I just won a game with a city at 102 culture development and did not unlock the achievement for 100+ culture from one city.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

One thing I'd like to know - can the growth of a city usurp tiles (edit: er, still usurp, that is) that other cities had been using? If they aren't being worked, for example?

No, I've not seen that. Culture Bomb is the only way I've seen to take land from an enemy

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Early in the game, absolutely. 50-55 gold is a bargain compared to bringing in a key resource. You can only work out to 3 tiles and it does get expensive further out. After buying a tile or two, I save my early money for city-states.

I save my early money for an aggressive city. I place it near my opponent to challenge their resources, and then buy the land near theirs to lock them off and set my borders.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Abe Sargent

I save my early money for an aggressive city. I place it near my opponent to challenge their resources, and then buy the land near theirs to lock them off and set my borders.

I do the same, but I find it pisses them off to no end. So make sure you are ready for the inevitable war that will be coming.

[PraetorianX]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Double-check that the coast hexes are not ocean?

No, the first ocean tiles are ice. Although I could probably reach one ocean tile that's not ice, but surrounded by ice. Cities can reach out three tiles yeah?

Still, ocean or not it doesn't make much sense, especially since there is a pearl resource right there. Work boats if nothing else should be allowed to be built.

[Abe Sargent]

I just checked and there are three achievements I've gotten in my games, and not unlocked. I've gotten Magellan, City of Lights, and Death Before Shame.

[Big Fo]

After my last game where the AI Civs largely left each other alone (on a small continents map), they have pretty much gobbled each other up this time. The game began with eight Civs and is now down to three at the start of the Industrial Age and I only took down two of them. I try to play peacefully but I just enjoy the combat so more on this game than Civ IV. Plus I was next to the Aztecs who I never get along with in any game and the Indians thought it would be a great idea to declare war on me when I had many times more cities and units than they did, that war lasted about four turns before they were conquered.

Based on the games I have played and from reading about other people's experiences this seems to occur regularly on large continents (playing a Terra map this time), the AI likes to scrap but doesn't seem to be very good at naval warfare/invading overseas/founding new cities away from their home continent.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Abe Sargent

I just checked and there are three achievements I've gotten in my games, and not unlocked. I've gotten Magellan, City of Lights, and Death Before Shame.

Most likely a problem with Steam. Unfortunately Steam doesn't do offline achievements, I've had times when I lost connection to Steam either on my end or theirs and haven't unlocked achievements I've gotten on other games. No idea if they plan on adding the ability to get achievements offline.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by Big Fo

Based on the games I have played and from reading about other people's experiences this seems to occur regularly on large continents (playing a Terra map this time), the AI likes to scrap but doesn't seem to be very good at naval warfare/invading overseas/founding new cities away from their home continent.

This would seem right from a game I played earlier today. Played on a small archipelago map and won a cultural victory without being attacked, and I don't think that any Civs were conquered. I noticed a few wars between civilizations that shared islands and some city states being conquered, but all civs stayed around. Not sure how much of the peace I maintained had to do with trying to maintain good relations by giving extra luxury resources away and doing research agreements and how much was them not being able to do naval combat. I also wasn't too close to anyone, I only shared a cultural border at sea with Ramses late in the game. Also, in my experience it seemed a lot of the time I'd been attacked in other games was due to other leaders being upset I was settling near them.

[PraetorianX]

BTW, anybody else had a problem with civs not getting going?

Okay, small map and Pangaea.

I (America) am in the south, Persia is to my west, Egypt to my north-west, Arabia directly north, Siam north-east, Ottomans east-north-east.

Early in the game I made two additional cities, Persia added another, and Siam added four or five. Seeing Siam, I decided to be a bit more aggressive in filling up my 'area'. Where I'm located has natural borders (mountain ranges) in all directions with three major passes and two small coastal passes to the south and west.

Siam meanwhile continues expanding in the north and east.

Egypt, Turks, Persia and Arabia seemingly do nothing for quite some time until finally in maybe the Medieval or Renaissance Era, I forget which (btw, I'm using marathon length) Peria starts expanding rapidly to my west, Egypt adds three or four cities, the Arabs add a few cities in the center of the map and the Turks add one at the far north and on the western side of the massive Siamese empire. They also tried to build one down by my southern border, but I dealt with the little bastards.

Anyway, I just found it odd that all the other civs other than Siam took so long to actually do anything. Has anybody else noticed anything like that happen or is it more likely just a freak occurence?

Siam is freaking annoying, though I've got the main pass into my lands from Siam well defended.

Siam also set up shop in a few far flung cities on the other side of the map, which I find annoying but isn't really anything new to Civ. I hate when civs do that though.

[SackAttack]

Got the 'are you sure you wanna attack a city?' popup while the game was thinking between turns.

It never would go away, so I had to force-quit.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by PraetorianX

BTW, anybody else had a problem with civs not getting going?

Okay, small map and Pangaea.

I (America) am in the south, Persia is to my west, Egypt to my north-west, Arabia directly north, Siam north-east, Ottomans east-north-east.

Early in the game I made two additional cities, Persia added another, and Siam added four or five. Seeing Siam, I decided to be a bit more aggressive in filling up my 'area'. Where I'm located has natural borders (mountain ranges) in all directions with three major passes and two small coastal passes to the south and west.

Siam meanwhile continues expanding in the north and east.

Egypt, Turks, Persia and Arabia seemingly do nothing for quite some time until finally in maybe the Medieval or Renaissance Era, I forget which (btw, I'm using marathon length) Peria starts expanding rapidly to my west, Egypt adds three or four cities, the Arabs add a few cities in the center of the map and the Turks add one at the far north and on the western side of the massive Siamese empire. They also tried to build one down by my southern border, but I dealt with the little bastards.

Anyway, I just found it odd that all the other civs other than Siam took so long to actually do anything. Has anybody else noticed anything like that happen or is it more likely just a freak occurence?

Siam is freaking annoying, though I've got the main pass into my lands from Siam well defended.

Siam also set up shop in a few far flung cities on the other side of the map, which I find annoying but isn't really anything new to Civ. I hate when civs do that though.

I haven't seen that in any of my games so far with one exception: India. They don't spread much at all it seems, ever. Probably because of their penalty to add too many cities.


I have seen quite often a civ will get set back pretty badly because of settlers getting captured by barbarians. They seem to continue to want to settle one spot and if a Barbarian is near, it will keep picking them off. So maybe in some of the cases you have seen it was barbarians causing them problems?

[chesapeake]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

One of the key strategies is to be really friendly with a Maritime city-state. That way they can provide your empire with plenty of food while you concentrate on better things.

Great tip, and I unwittingly hit right on it. Smashing Babylon made me allies with Rio, whom Nebby had just attacked. Now I've got growth despite negative happiness. I had to recalibrate the tiles my cities were working to ensure I didn't have too much growth.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Early in the game, absolutely. 50-55 gold is a bargain compared to bringing in a key resource. You can only work out to 3 tiles and it does get expensive further out. After buying a tile or two, I save my early money for city-states.

Thanks Bucc!

[Buccaneer]

For those that are wondering how this game typically plays or wondering that the commotion has been about, read Sulla'a walkthrough and review. He was the one that did the famous early walkthrough when Civ4 had just come out (and taught a lot of us how to play).

American Empire

[Alan T]

Just started playing my first Huge map game. And man huge maps are so much easier than Normal or small maps. It seems the larger the map, the easier the game. My prince level game on a huge map seems easier than my beginner level small map game.

I think the AI just doesn't handle all of these choices in the huge map too well. This is completely opposite of Civ 4 where the larger maps seemed tougher to me. After this game is done, I'll likely go back to a small map, seems more fun.

[Edward64]

Recap of Civ I through IV. Nice to relive the past some.
The history of Civilization: 20 years of Wonders

[Buccaneer]

I have been trying out the City-States strategy playing as Greeks and it has been a lot of fun. I wanted to learn how to manage such a relationship (it's easy if you have the gold and the policies) and what I can get from them (tons of stuff). I'm about to ally with a Militaristic city-state so that will be interesting.

One of the simplest strategies is to sell a luxury good to a civ for 300g, which will give you -5 happiness. Then turn around and pay 500g to a city-state which will give at least 1 luxury good in return.

If you want to maximize city-state relationships, skip the early policies and shoot toward the Patronage one (rah detailed this). Wonders are easy to build even with no build bonuses and not only did I get Great Library but went ahead and built Oracle which gave me a policy for free. It's not even 500bc and I have all but one Patronage policies.

In the meantime, I have been dealing with Barbs and Brutes and my one souped-up warrior is doing the job after being softened by a trireme (using range weapons against the AI is easy, they have a hard time dealing with such). Now I am ready to build the UU Cavalry and Hoplites. Also, the AI doesn't know how to use embarkings and naval units well at all. I got Optics early and while I have to stay on the coast, I can get around really well - sending units to attack Barbs and to get ruins on islands and such.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

I have been trying out the City-States strategy playing as Greeks and it has been a lot of fun. I wanted to learn how to manage such a relationship (it's easy if you have the gold and the policies) and what I can get from them (tons of stuff). I'm about to ally with a Militaristic city-state so that will be interesting.

One of the simplest strategies is to sell a luxury good to a civ for 300g, which will give you -5 happiness. Then turn around and pay 500g to a city-state which will give at least 1 luxury good in return.

If you want to maximize city-state relationships, skip the early policies and shoot toward the Patronage one (rah detailed this). Wonders are easy to build even with no build bonuses and not only did I get Great Library but went ahead and built Oracle which gave me a policy for free. It's not even 500bc and I have all but one Patronage policies.

In the meantime, I have been dealing with Barbs and Brutes and my one souped-up warrior is doing the job after being softened by a trireme (using range weapons against the AI is easy, they have a hard time dealing with such). Now I am ready to build the UU Cavalry and Hoplites. Also, the AI doesn't know how to use embarkings and naval units well at all. I got Optics early and while I have to stay on the coast, I can get around really well - sending units to attack Barbs and to get ruins on islands and such.

So far I have found the militaristic city-states to be pretty under-whelming.