Civilization V

[Starwars]

Yeah, it just really seems to depend on your general playstyle what you do with conquered cities. I don't think Puppet States are a good long terms solution though. I figure you gotta weigh in the options and situation when you conquer a city. If you really need the happiness, you can always make it a Puppet State and then Annex it later on when you're in a better spot.

 

Of course, if you're playing culturally (it's fully possible to get into wars still) you'll be better off razing them to the ground.

 

Christ, I've been playing this way too much lately. Haven't had any work either since the game was released... I'm seeing hexagons everywhere.

[Maria Caliban]

I've ended up in east asia with Alexander as a neighbor. He won't enter a pact of cooperation, but we have open boarders and we wiped out Washington together. He's now rampaging westward, and I'm wondering if I can trust him to maintain an allience. For some reason, my military advisor refuses to tell me how my army is compared to his. I know he's done unit spam, but I'm fielding calvary, the french forgien legion, and musketers while he still has pikemen.

 

I wonder if a should pre-emptively attack him.

[Thorton_AP]

I puppet state until I am ready to fully annex. I find burn and replace gamey and only do it if I find the city is in a poor position.

 

 

I don't think ignoring happiness is a viable strategy. Below 10 happiness your armies no longer fight as effectively, and some of your production and/or income is outright halted (I can't remember the details. I just remember getting it and going "oh god I have to change this now").

 

I do wish the game would allow you to destroy constructed buildings.

Edited September 28, 2010 by Thorton_AP

[Starwars]

I've ended up in east asia with Alexander as a neighbor. He won't enter a pact of cooperation, but we have open boarders and we wiped out Washington together. He's now rampaging westward, and I'm wondering if I can trust him to maintain an allience. For some reason, my military advisor refuses to tell me how my army is compared to his. I know he's done unit spam, but I'm fielding calvary, the french forgien legion, and musketers while he still has pikemen.

 

I wonder if a should pre-emptively attack him.

 

I would be very wary if I were you. I had a similar situation (in fact, I think it was Alexander as well) where me and the other civilization ended up rampaging on a continent together. If they *are* acting militaristic and are expanding/conquering like crazy, it's very likely that they will turn on you eventually even if you've helped each other out in the past.

[Enoch]

I don't think ignoring happiness is a viable strategy. Below 10 happiness your armies no longer fight as effectively, and some of your production and/or income is outright halted (I can't remember the details. I just remember getting it and going "oh god I have to change this now").

You lose all city growth, your production from hammers is halved, and you get a 33% penalty to combat. Oh, and you won't get any Golden Ages from happiness.

 

The theory is to play normally until around the Renaissance, then launch your War Machine. At the point where you would normally stop to fix your empire's happiness, don't. The key point here is that the game makes no distinction between being at -20 Happiness and being at -200 Happiness. Annex all cities, build no Courthouses or other happiness improvements, sell off all your happiness resources, and switch all your citizens to working high-Gold tiles or as specialists. You'll make loads of cash from conquests and trade deals so you can buy all the production you'll need, and you'll have a higher tech rate than your rivals because your population is so high. You'll also get a good amount of Great People (from the Specialists) that you can burn on Golden Ages or on trade missions. The combat penalty will hurt, but you can make that up by being technologically advanced and by having loads of Great Generals. Here is the thread on Civfanatics discussing this.

[Malcador]

Annexing all of Arabia's cities seemed like a bad idea. Random question, do you get SMAC-like body counts after you burn a city down ?

[Raithe]

Hm, now I've only managed to play a few hours of Civ... but I'm finding the computer seems to take an awful long time moving other civilizations...

 

It feels like I'm spending more time on the "waiting for other civilizations" than I am on my own turns... Almost as if I was doing a multiplayer on CivIV rather than a single player game..

 

Anyone else noticed this or do I just have too much junk running?

[Maria Caliban]

I would be very wary if I were you. I had a similar situation (in fact, I think it was Alexander as well) where me and the other civilization ended up rampaging on a continent together. If they *are* acting militaristic and are expanding/conquering like crazy, it's very likely that they will turn on you eventually even if you've helped each other out in the past.

 

I agree. Right now I'm at mechinized infantry while the other civilizations aren't. He's run up against Montezuma and Bizmark, who have spent the time digging in. I think he's pinned right now, and will attack Monte next. I figure I can fpull off a win before he attempt to attack me.

 

You'll also get a good amount of Great People (from the Specialists) that you can burn on Golden Ages or on trade missions.

 

At the moment, that's all I'm using the specialists for other than the engineer.

Edited September 28, 2010 by Maria Caliban

[Enoch]

I've become convinced that if you plan on doing any warring at all, your first two Social Policies should always be the generic Honor and the first rank "Discipline" in that tree. The bonus against Barbarians is nice early on (and increasingly necessary as you climb to higher difficulties), and the immediate notification when a Barb camp spawns in previously explored territory is quite useful. But the real gem is Discipline: +15% combat strength when a unit is adjacent to another unit. Since nearly all of your important military engagements are going to rely on grouped units, this is a huge huge bonus that can't be matched by any of the other early Social Policy options (leaving aside boutique strategies like wonderspam cultural games).

[Maria Caliban]

I wouldn't go that far. The first one is highly useful though.

 

I wish they had ships that could carry land units.

 

Is it true that the more cities you have, the harder it is to get social policies?

Edited September 28, 2010 by Maria Caliban

[Malcador]

More cities you build, I think. So no added costs to conquering cities.

[Calax]

The more cities you build, your policy necessity for culture jumps by a percentage (I think 25% extra per city you construct)

[Deraldin]

Annexing cities does increase your social policy cost. I jumped from 3500 to over 5500 temporarily while waiting for all my conquered Japanese cities to be razed to the ground.

[Malcador]

Whoops my mistake. Well then, time to burn Arabia to the ground.

[SadExchange]

I have a question, I'm at the year approximately 1935 A.D. and am running into the problem of each turn finding out that a lot of my cities are starting to starve. Each turn I can't seem to keep my food production in my cities above 1 and I'm running out of reasons why that I can think of? How do I keep control of my food? I've tried setting my default production to food, but it's late game. Also, should I be annexing or puppeting each city I take over? My gold per turn (profit) is also trimming down as well. Would appreciate any help. I've pretty much built all the buildings needed to extend the food production like granaries and such.

[Enoch]

I have a question, I'm at the year approximately 1935 A.D. and am running into the problem of each turn finding out that a lot of my cities are starting to starve. Each turn I can't seem to keep my food production in my cities above 1 and I'm running out of reasons why that I can think of? How do I keep control of my food? I've tried setting my default production to food, but it's late game. Also, should I be annexing or puppeting each city I take over? My gold per turn (profit) is also trimming down as well. Would appreciate any help. I've pretty much built all the buildings needed to extend the food production like granaries and such.

First, is your happiness negative? That will hurt food production.

 

Also, did you let any alliances or friendships with any City States lapse? Getting chummy with a Maritime city state gives you bonus food in all your cities. That's actually the quickest and best way to solve this kind of problem-- give some cash to the nearest maritime City State for an alliance.

[Thorton_AP]

I don't think happiness affects required food, just extra (i.e. growth rate).

 

Losing the maritime states is a big one for me too. If you're at war and/or there's barbarians nearby (unlikely at 1935) they can prevent tiles from being worked.

[Calax]

I don't think happiness affects required food, just extra (i.e. growth rate).

 

Losing the maritime states is a big one for me too. If you're at war and/or there's barbarians nearby (unlikely at 1935) they can prevent tiles from being worked.

I had an annoying time with this where a Barbarian trireme was sitting off my coast, about every other turn it'd move in and deny me half the tiles, then move away, finally the city managed to get enough production to produce a trireme of my own to hit back.

 

I was spending most of my money on units on the other end of my empire to hold off an attack by three computers because a teammate of mine decided to attack the solitary comp on his island (I held them off fairly easily with just the city and a bowman).

[Thorton_AP]

An archer would be able to shoot the trireme too

[Enoch]

The game is starting to disappoint me as I'm discovering just how easy it is to roll over the opposition militarily. It seems that when an AI makes a decision to "go for culture" or whatever, it sets on a build path that totally fails to produce anything close to enough military for self-defense. As a 3-city Greek empire (one of which was the captured Siamese capital, so it's not like the AI had no warning that they had an aggressive neighbor), I went to war with China after they founded a city (their second) in a spot that was most incovenient for me. After eliminating the inconvenient city with a pair of Hoplites, I took my sweet ol' time assembling my forces to head to Beijing. (I was fighting with Hoplites, Archers, Swordsmen, and one Horseman that an allied City State had given me.) The town had an Archer garrisoned there. I would also encounter another Chinese Archer in the field later on (easily dispatched when it ended a turn next to my road network just after I had produced my first Companion Cavalry). Those were the only military units I fought. And the garrison Archer fell for the most lame of tricks-- I sent my Horseman in and captured the 3 Workers that were out in the fields near the City (and then pulled out to beyond City-bombard range). The silly Archer sallied to re-capture one of the Workers, leaving him a sitting duck for the Horseman on the next turn. Idiotic.

 

The other two remaining AIs on the continent have 2 or 3 cities each, and have done nothing of note except for a Wonder or two and a couple of futile wars against local City-States. (I, on the other hand, have allied with 4 City States, mostly by simply destroying local barbarian camps and returing captured Workers.)

 

There are some serious balance (magical City-State food) and AI issues here.

[Thorton_AP]

I agree that the difficulty of the game has compromised the overall quality. I still love the game and some of the improvements, but for a challenge I find myself wanting more of Civ 4's challenge. But when I play Civ 4, I wish I had the hexes and style of Civ 5 hahahaha.

 

Hopefully improvements can be made through patches and or expansions.

 

I do have one game going where Rome has conquered pretty much the entire other continent and is beating me in almost everything (as Russia). I'm going to go back to that game and see how it plays out because he appears to have a military force of significance (artillery and infantry).

[Enoch]

One of the AI's blindspots seems to be making way too many Workers. You can see this in your advisors' recommendations of what to build in your own cities-- if there's an unimproved tile within your borders, they want you to make a Worker. But the tile improvements aren't quite as important as they were in Civ4 (no +3 food for farming a Corn tile, for example), so the drawback for working unimproved tiles, and thus the practical value of Workers, is lower. Plus, with 1-unit-per-tile applying to Workers as well as to combat units (which is really irritating if you want to hurry a road connection by having 2 Workers 'leap-frog' each other), you can't stack them for quicker project completion.

 

(FWIW, it's actually much cheaper to capture early Workers from a neighboring City State. You can make peace again pretty easily, and the negative influence will probably have eroded back to zero by the time you might want to befriend them. They're essentially free, especially if it's a lower-value Militaristic or Cultural City State that doesn't have any resources you need hooked up yet.)

Edited September 30, 2010 by Enoch

[Thorton_AP]

Haha that is a neat idea for the workers.

 

AI build order is definitely bunk. They should probably weight it to 1 per city or so (my not so hard rule of thumb).

 

I'm still playing the bejebus out of the game though hahahahahahahaha

[TheHarlequin]

Not a big fan of the new happiness model as others above me are discovering. They removed corruption and pollution just to make happiness overly sensitive where it requires a massive amount of micro managing. And you get one resource and 2 turns later they loose interest in it and want something else. Its non-stop, fairly annoying.

[Maria Caliban]

I've tried several times for a cultural victory and failed completely. I now realize it's because I've had fairly large empires. I'm now trying for an India three-city cultural victory. Hopefully, I'll start in the Americas.