Civilization V

[fragger]

Workers can only build improvements within your territorial borders (the unbroken coloured line that surrounds your cities). When a city is first founded, the border only encompasses the six adjacent hexes to that city. As you city grows and its Cultural influence increases, this border expands, one hex at a time. Cities can only access the hexes within your borders, and only up to a radius of three hexes from the city hex. Even if a hex is within your territory, if it is more than three hexes from any city hex it cannot be worked by Citizens. However, if the hex contains a Luxury or Strategic resource, your workers can build the appropriate improvement there to access the resource even if it is more then three hexes from any cities - but only if it is within your borders.

If you have the money you can buy additional hexes to expand your borders, but you can only buy hexes that are adjacent to your existing border and are within three hexes of the city in question. Click on a city hex to open the city screen, and at the bottom you will see a "Buy Tiles" button. Click on this and any hexes that you can buy for this city will be indicated on the map, along with their prices.

Only hexes within your borders can be built upon, the exception being Roads (need to discover The Wheel first). Workers can build roads anywhere except through Mountains, or within other players' territorial borders.

I don't know why your Great General can't build a Citadel. Maybe he can't do that outside your borders - I've never tried doing that. Be aware that if you order the Great General to build a Citadel and he does, you'll lose him in the process (this uses him up).

Apart from building Citadels, the Great Generals have a much more valuable function: When you're at war, any land Combat unit within two hexes of a Great General's position will gain a 20% Combat Strength increase, which applies to both attack and defense. The effects of Generals are not cumulative, i.e. if a single unit is within two hexes of two different Generals, it will still only gain 20% Combat Strength. But if you have more than one General and you space them out so that as many of your units as possible are within two-hexes of any General, those units will get the bonus. It can make quite a difference to the outcome of a battle.

If you really want the General to build a Citadel, try either moving him into your borders, or purchase tiles from a nearby city until the hex where you want the Citadel is within your borders. But remember, you can only purchase tiles up to three hexes away from any city. Incidentally, your borders will continue to expand throughout the game and can end up seven, eight or even more hexes away from your cities. When the border from one city meets the border of another they will merge together. Eventually you'll end up with one continuous border around all your cities. The standing rule is that you cannot enter another player's borders unless you have an Open Borders agreement with them, or you're at war with them. They can't come into yours either, of course.

A Great General can also be expended to start a "Golden Age", as can any Great Person (there are also Great Scientists, Great Merchants, Great Artists and Great Engineers. These guys all have different functions, which I won't go into here just now). This will only last for a limited number of turns, but while your empire is in a Golden Age all production and trade in all your cities is greatly increased. Another way that Golden Ages come about is related to your Happiness value (the number in yellow next to the smiley face at the top of the screen). At the end of each turn, your Happiness value is added to your "Golden Age" points total (the numbers in white to the right of the Happiness indicator). You may see something that looks like this: 75/200 (white numbers). The value to the right of the slash is how many GA points you need to accumulate in order to trigger the next Golden Age, the number to the left of the slash is how many you currently have. Each turn, your Happiness value is added to this total, so the more Happiness you can generate, the more frequently you will enjoy Golden Ages. GAs by default will last for ten turns, however some Wonders and Social Policies can extend this base figure.

Guessing though, I'd say that the reason you can't get your Workers to build is because they're outside your borders.

[JRD]

fragger.... mate... Wow!  ??? ... excellent tips.  :-X +1 for all that help. Saved me a lot of browsing and considering how much details there are in this game, I can easily say you saved me a whole weekend of reading wikis  ^-^

I guess one reason why my workers can't build sometimes may be because I move them to the tile where I want them to build something and use all their moves for hat turn so I have to wait for the next turn to put them to w@&k. That and maybe because thee tiles around my capital have forests so I have to chop them down first and then create something. Setting them to automatically do it can help but I am trying to control them myself first before I let them loose.

And yes, my general can build a citadel but only withing my borders. I could see the icon but it was greyed out. That's what created some confusion at first. Nice tip about him being near my military units to boost their combat strength. I'll make sure I keep him around next time.  8)

Question: can I build a road to a city-state nearby? Is it helpful as in increasing my trading or improving my diplomacy status somehow?

[fragger]

You're quite welcome mate :) Thanks for the kudo!

Building a road to a City-State won't do anything as such - however, sometimes if you're already friends or allied with a City-State, they may actually request that you build a road to them. If you do, it won't boost trade or anything, but you will gain more influence points with them once the road is completed, which will extend the friendship/alliance. This is the only time when a road to a City-State has any benefit - when they request it themselves. This actually happens quite commonly when you're allied with City-States, so there's noting to stop you building a road towards a City-State in anticipation of the request. Then if they do request it. you'll have less road to build, and thus less turns will elapse before the road is built. Remember, your influence with City-States always decreases per turn until such times as you top it back up, either through gifts of gold or through completing any quests they offer, such as building the road. Just be sure not to start building the road into their territory unless they offer the request, or they may not make the request at all. Stop the road a hex or two short of their borders - and don't forget that their borders will expand too, but never by more than three hexes from their city. Their borders expand much more slowly than the AI players'.

The value of friendships/alliances with City-States can never be understated. They can provide you with Strategic and Luxury resources that you don't otherwise have access to, but you need to be allied with them for that. Every City-State will have at least one Strategic or Luxury resource, sometimes more than one of each, but they can't provide you with them until their Workers build the appropriate resource Improvements, and you can't build those for them (although with the "Gods and Kings" EXP, you can pay Gold to have them build the Improvements immediately). If you're attacked by another Civ, they will fight for you if they're allied with you. There are three types of City-State: Mercantile (has a ship's wheel icon next to their name), Cultural (has a "pen and quill" icon), and Militaristic (has crossed swords). There are a few more types with the Gods and Kings EXP. If you're at least Friends with City-States, the Mercantile ones will provide additional food for all your cities, Cultural ones will provide additional Culture points, and Militaristic ones will sometimes give you a new combat unit (you can stop them doing this if you don't want more combat units - click on the City-State and choose "Stop Unit Spawning" in the window that appears. You can restart it later if you want). All City-States will give you additional Gold when you're at least Friends with them. Alliances with as many of them as possible are crucial if you ever want to try pulling off a Diplomatic Victory.

One last thing about Generals (and other Great People) - they are non-combatant. If your General is in a hex by himself and an enemy unit moves into that hex, you will lose him. He can be stacked with any combat unit for protection, but if the combat unit that he is stacked with is eliminated, he will also be lost. So you need to protect him and be careful about where you place him. Also, he can't be stacked with another noncombatant unit, such as a Worker. The only stacking allowed for land units is: one combat unit with one noncombat unit. You can have a combat unit in the same hex as, say, a Worker or Settler, but not two combat units, nor two Workers.

Hope this is of help to you. I love this game, and you can't ask me too many questions. I'm happy to share anytime, buddy :)

[JRD]

Thanks again. You are definitely the go-to-guy when it comes to Civ V.  :-X . All your tips have been extremely useful so far... keep them coming.  :-D

I am still trying to learn how the several commands and strategies play out. I used to play Age of Empires and Age of Mythology a lot in the past and even though these are also strategy games they are far more simple than Civ V and I have to do a lot of research to get the hang of this game.

What I am basically doing is trying to survive without even plan any long term strategy such as develop science and win the game by launching a spaceship or aiming for a diplomatic or military victory. I know it doesn't sound like a good idea for a seasoned player but this is just how I am learning to play. I know one of my unmet copetitors is more advanced than me and I am trying to catch up by investing in research and producing all sorts of important buildings and wonders to move on. I am sure I could benefit from an initial long term strategy since the beginning and avoid adopting policies or building structures that are not in line with this strategy but I just can't see through all available options yet.

I already found out that you don't actually need a whole lot of workers as they will become idle quite fast and since I'm playing using your tips from a couple posts ago I am in relative peace only bothered by a barbarian or two but with nothing to actually worry about. I am nut popping military units every turn, only a few of different classes (ranged, infantry, naval) to make sure I can resist an eventual attack and keeping them near my cities.

Other than that it is basically click here and there to me and see what happens.  ^-^ . I should be more comfortable with the mechanics on my next game.

[Stiku]

Rapid expansion so that your workers wont become idle, you constantly need for grow, more cities, roads from city to city(these will also help you move quicker inside your own borders), and also trying to get different resources from the map is also handy.

Also garrison units somewhere, and remember more units, more mouths to feed.

Also check your cities production items, and what hexes they are using to gather its resources, and optimize this for growth, or at war times for other resources(food), this also helps eliminate unhappiness from people.

[JRD]

Thanks Stiku.  :-X

I am keeping four worker units with three cities. This way I can have a unit working at every city, building plantations, quarries, mines, pastures etc and one moving between them building roads or helping filling up any unused tile. Maybe one more could be good but so far it's working for me.

One of my city is between the other two and surrounded by water so any invasion army would either past through one of the cities to the sides of my capital or from the sea, which is maybe five or six tiles away and is occupied by one friendly city-state. With this set up I can keep military units only at the two cities to the sides of my capital and a couple trirremes down to the shore side of my capital and still be safe (I believe). I guess I am ok with my military units and will only build more when I settle a new city which may happen soon.

Now for all the wonders and buildings like Library, Market etc. I am randomly picking one everytime I have to choose one and sometimes checking the small gem stone like icon at the corner of any construction in the menu indicating that an advisor is suggesting me to choose that one. I'm not sure what is the impact of choosing this or that wonder and kind of building on my progress and this is what I am trying to figure out at the moment. By rovering the cursosr over any choice I get an indication of what that particular building will open up for me but again, as I don't have a clear long term strategy this is not helping me much.  ::)

Research wise I am just choosing whatever can be done in less turns so I can pick the next one. The implications of choosing this or that research are pretty straightforward and the hovering cursor tip is truly helping me when I can't decide which one to choose so this is going well too.

Another question: I can build a wonder or building on a given city. It will take a certain number of turns to be completed. I can also build a wonder and a building on another city which is more developed and the same choice will take less turns to be completed. For instance a Library at my capital will take, say, 8 turns to be finished but a Library at my newest city may take, say, 24 turns. The more developed your city is, the faster you can buid things in it. Is this how it works or am I missing something here?

Also, once I build a Wonder, like a pyramid... is it also available to my other cities or there can be only one wonder of each type (the Pyramids can be built only once for instance)? If another player builds it, does it disapper from my menu?

[Stiku]

Cities have their development status shown usually, which tells you the accumulation of stats, more people living there, more happier they are, bigger the city is(more building in it), less time it takes to build units, wonders, building(try not to concentrate everything into just one place, look for the happiness of people, its the smiley face on top left, if it goes to bad you growth will slow down significantly and your income will also drop)

Wonders can be only built once, so if your AI build the pyramids, you or no one else can build it again.

Research is actually what you are aiming at, if you want to dominate the board, you might not want to research anything else than those that are essential to the war making. Research points on the left upper corner will tell you how many points you are getting per turn of research points also, so you might want to invest on buildings that produce research points.(also coins and diplomacy points are there too) Next is to look what you are researching, it will usually tell you that this will lead to these advancements when research has been complete, also you can check the ingame help research tool to see what leads to what, what gets you the quickest to the technology that you want/need.

But for now, try to enjoy the game, learn as you go, try different stuffs, you'll figure it out sooner or later what works for you the best.

[fragger]

There are two types of Wonders - Great Wonders, which as Stiku said can only be built once per game, and "Projects". Every player can build a particular Project, but just once. An example is the "Heroic Epic". To build this, you must first have built a Barracks in every one of your cities. Projects take longer to build than Buildings but not as long as Wonders, generally. You can only "build" the Heroic Epic once, but each player can have one. Once you've built the Heroic Epic in a particular city, any combat unit subsequently built in that city will start off with extra XPs, i.e. may start with an additional Promotion. Many Projects are like this, requiring every city in your empire to have a particular building existing in them. Another example is "Oxford University". Once you've built a University in every city, Oxford becomes available to build. Once completed, you will get a free Tech discovery (you can choose which one you want).

The game isn't clear on which Wonders are in fact Great Wonders and which are Projects. The Civilopedia can help here, as can online Wikis. Otherwise it's just a matter of getting to know which are which. Whether it's a Wonder or a Project, you can only attempt construction in one city at a time, i.e. you can't be simultaneously building the same Wonder in two different cities. If you want to switch construction of the Wonder to another city, you first have to cease construction in the current city by choosing something else to build there, then going to the other city and switching production to the Wonder.

...For instance a Library at my capital will take, say, 8 turns to be finished but a Library at my newest city may take, say, 24 turns. The more developed your city is, the faster you can buid things in it. Is this how it works or am I missing something here?

Everything you build - Units, Buildings and Wonders - is priced in Production points. A particular Building or Unit may cost, say, 40 Production points to complete, so the more Production points a city can generate (represented by little hammers) the faster that city will build it. Buildings like Workshops and Forges (if a city has an improved source of Iron nearby) will increase Production, as will Improvements such as Quarries (if the city can access the Stone special resource), Mines (build in hill hexes for best results) and Lumberyards (build in Forest hexes). Lumberyards are pretty good actually if you have a lot of forest hexes around. Keep a few standing so you can build Lumberyards in them, as these will yield Production and Food.

Incidentally, any hex that is next to a river will yield an additional Gold point, on top of whatever other resources the hex's terrain will generate. These can really add up, especially when you get Marketplaces, Banks and Stock Exchanges happening, so if you see a place where you can build a City which can take advantage of a lot of riverside hexes, go for it.

When you click on a city and the city display opens, at the top of the right column of information is a tab named "Citizen Management". By default, this is minimized. Click on the "+" and it will expand. Here you can choose a radio button to direct your citizens to focus on a particular resource, such as Food, Gold, Production, etc and the program will reallocate the Citizens as best it can to maximize that resource. Keep an eye on your other resources if you do this - setting them to "Production Focus" will increase the city's Production output but may decrease its Gold or Food output. It's a balancing act.

When you expand the Citizen Management tab you will also see the map change - the resources from all hexes currently available to that city will be shown, along with icons that indicate which hexes are currently being worked by Citizens. These are marked with a green-lit "head" icon. These icons are greyed out for non-worked hexes. This allows you to manually rearrange your Citizens, but for this, the Citizen Management tab must be expanded. If you want a particular Citizen to w@&k a hex other than the one the program has picked, you can click on the Citizen icon (the little green-lit head) and he will be temporarily removed from the display (actually he'll turn into a "Specialist", but I won't overload you with info about that here now). Click on the new hex you want him to w@&k in and he will appear there - the icon for that hex will light up and change to a padlock. He's not locked there - you can put him back if you want, or move him to yet another hex. If you've rearranged a few Citizens and you want to put them all back the way they were, click on the "Reset Tiles" button in the Citizen Management box, or choose a new resource focus.

Choosing a Resource focus and then fine-tuning it by reallocating some Citizens will allow you to tailor your Resource output to what is needed at that time. Sometimes I've found that if I direct the Citizens to focus on Production, for example, it will leave me short of Food or Gold. But then if I reallocate a Citizen or two manually to get back some Food or Gold, I can still come out ahead in Production while getting in enough Food and/or Gold to get by with.

Anyway, I hope you're enjoying the game, JRD. As Stiku said, don't try to focus on winning a game right from the start. Just take your time and try different things, see what works. There is a lot there, but it's just a matter of getting used to how things w@&k. The game's tutorial section can help a bit, but it doesn't go hugely in-depth.

Civ V is a deceptively deep game. Even after playing for a few years I'm still learning some new tricks :-X

Just out of curiosity - is your game fully updated via Steam? Some of what I've posted so far may not exist in the original, non-updated vanilla game. If you have the time, and if you haven't done so already, let Steam update the game all the way. Civ V updates don't take too long, and the updates really do improve the game - a lot :)

[Stiku]

Nice way to open up things Fragger, and yes the game is so much more than just going from turn to turn, I do remember the transition from Civilization to Civilization 2 Call to power, which actually gave us the terrain factors, population factors and other improvements which makes the game so joyfull to play, Civ 1 actually just had the core game(meaning without the extra micromanagements that later games had), and Call to power actually gave us the micromanagement part, that allowed us to fine tune the cities and units.

One part that you should also take part of is the military units bonuses, which units are better to attack what units, this is known from the RTS games like C&C,Empire Earth, AOE1,2,3. If you played AOE, you should be actually be allready familiar with the waiting, as AOE had one of the most slowest unit creation, and moving time of them all, most people actually left their computers on for the night to create huge armies to beat the AI in some cases.

Second part is the politics in this game, which in my opinion are the most annoying thing ever, as you constantly have to think what neighbours want too, they don't like you to be too close to their borders, or have military units running near their capital city, also their have their preferences on what to take, and don't want to include you in them, as an example, if you cut them from accessing a water source, they will denounce you, also just by taking a tile that they wanted, can actually lead to the same outcome too, so its important that you take what you need right from the start, hence the game has scouts that will do the exploration part for you.

[fragger]

I never played the original Civilization, and I was surprised to learn, just recently in fact, that it actually began as a tabletop board game in 1980, before the PC age. It was distributed by Avalon Hill, the folks that had pioneered the whole genre of deep strategy board games beginning back in the sixties. The original Civilization PC game was Sid Meier's take on the board game. He and his team took the concept to a whole new level with Civilization II (1996) after realizing the potential for computers to enhance this type of game, and that was the one that really got me hooked on the series.

I think you're confusing two different games. Civilization II was developed by Sid Meier and his team, but Civilization: Call to Power was a totally different game altogether. Civilization: Call to Power was developed by Activision after Civilization II was released, and after Sid and his friends went off to form their own software company, Firaxis. It was a crap game which I played for about ten minutes before I got fed up with it. Civilization II on the other hand was a wonderful game and was the one that really snagged me.

On another note, I picked up the Brave New World EXP for Civ V today. I found it in the discount bin at my local gaming shop, for $18.00. I'll be interested to see what this new addition will bring to the table.

[fragger]

The Brave New World EXP for Civ V actually brings heaps of new stuff to the table, more than the Gods and Kings EXP did. Nine new Cultures (bringing the total up to 38), a redesigned Tech Tree with new techs, new game concepts such as Tourism, World Congress and Ideology, totally re-imagined Social Policy section, new Units and Buildings, new Wonders and Projects, and a feature that I've sorely missed from way back in Civ II, the ability to establish Trade Routes between your cities and other players' (or City-States) using Caravan and Cargo Ship units. There are new Great People and new ways of achieving Cultural and Diplomatic victories.

There are some new titles for the Scenario game, one of which is the American Civil War which features unique units and a cut-down Tech Tree created especially for that historical period (no A-bombs here, natch :-()) The action focusses on the Eastern Theatre. Play as the Union or the Rebs and try to capture your opponent's Capital to win the war. I'm looking forward to giving that a go.

Phew... It's gonna take a while to get my head around all the new stuff.

Oh, and there's a beautifully refurbished UI, it looks terrific. Still the same Art-Deco style and layout, but with new colours and renderings. Very classy :-X

As with Gods and Kings, this EXP will permanently alter the existing game. But I think it should be worth it, even though it would have been nice if they could have done what they did with Alpha Centauri's Alien Crossfire EXP and given you the choice of playing either the original game or the expanded one at launch. Oh well.

I also saw a trailer for this at Steam, a new game from Sid. Sounds like fun from the article. There are a couple of comments at the end of the article which mirrored my sentiments exactly regarding Civ: Beyond Earth. I wasn't the only one who felt the way I did about that game, obviously...

http://www.pcgamesn.com/sid-meiers-starships/sid-meier-s-starships-is-a-glorious-stripped-back-strategy-game-packed-with-chunky-spaceships

[fragger]

I watched about half of this clip showing gameplay from Starships (it's a long clip, almost 40 minutes) but it looks like it might be quite a fun strategy/tactical affair. The earlier article described the game as having less depth than Civ but it looks like there'll be options enough to make for varied game experiences.

http://www.vg247.com/2015/03/04/sid-meiers-starships-video-pc-mac-ipad/

Out on March 12.

[JRD]

Just out of curiosity - is your game fully updated via Steam? Some of what I've posted so far may not exist in the original, non-updated vanilla game. If you have the time, and if you haven't done so already, let Steam update the game all the way. Civ V updates don't take too long, and the updates really do improve the game - a lot :)

Yup, fully updated. I keep the autoupdate option always toggled on so I know I have my games with the latest patches. This is the version I'm playing:

Sid Meier's Civilization® V
Sid Meier's Civilization® V: Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar II)
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Double Civilization and Scenario Pack: Spain and Inca
Civilization® V: Explorer's Map Pack
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Civ and Scenario Pack: Mongols, Genghis Khan
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Mediterranean
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Asia
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Americas
Civilization V: Cradle of Civilization - Mesopotamia

Thanks for the tips on the University. I managed to build one on each city I have. I am going through the many ways of checking your cities regarding production and etc. I was lucky as I am the only civilization in the mini continent I spawned, along with two city states. Now that I have built caravels I managed to cross the ocean and found all other players. I can grow without worrying too much about war.  8)

[fragger]

Cool :-X :) Yep, that's a good way to start, on your own land mass. It doesn't always prevent war, though - the AIs will sometimes launch sea-borne invasions. Or if any of the City-States on your land become allied with another player and that player declares war on you, their allied City-State might then attack you. But being City-States they never have very many units. They become a nuisance more than they do a genuine threat.

[JRD]

One thing that makes Civ V completely different from any Age of Empires and it's many derivatives is that on those other games you are basically at war with any other player for as long as the game lasts. In Civ V you have multiple ways of playing and it makes the game far more enjoyable. I haven't been attacked by anyone so far except an occasional barbarian, who just a small nuisance, and didn't see why I should start any war against the other AI and be stuck managing military units (which I have a pretty good graps of its basic working principles) and miss the chance to lear the rest of the game. You actually get the idea of developing a civilization for the whole spectra of activities and social/cultural aspects and not just to be the first to grow an army strong enough to overpower the other players. In the end, any AoE is nothing but a rush through the available upgrades to see who gets the biggest gun first.

Another aspect that I wasn't excited about was the turn-based nature of Civ V as opposed to free flowing nature of AoE. At first I thought that it was hampering my progress but now I can enjoy it since I have time to check everything I'm doing, if everything is as I want it to be and check the fantastic animations.  :-X

[fragger]

I like the same things about the game too. It's not necessarily about war, but it can be if you want it to be. And if you do, it has a great combat model, and the fighting animations are fun to watch. I like too that the units are all tiny 3D models, not just 2D animation cells - it makes the game sort of come alive. I also like that there are other paths to victory open to you apart from warfare - scientific, cultural and diplomatic - so your options are open. You may begin a game with an intention to conquer everybody, but geography, resource availability and the status of the other players may preclude this. So you can try going another way and still manage pull off a different victory type. Or you can aim for, say, a scientific victory from the start and w@&k towards it. The game is quite flexible.

I totally agree about turn-based strategy vs. real-time. Both have their merits, but a turn-based game suits me better personally as I like to have time to think and plan. AoE, C&C and games of that type all too often degenerate into the usual "knight rush" or "tank rush" - you mass your forces, drag a box around them all to select them, then send them all in. Once the fight starts it's a real handful trying to direct individual units. All too often you'll select a unit but it'll get destroyed before you can give it an order. Often you can't tell who's engaging who. There's very little scope for tactics in those games. There is some, but it tends to go out the window once the battle is joined.

With Civ V there is not only a strong tactical element but a logistical one due to the fact that you can't stack combat units. Some thought has to go into how you move a collection of combat units across the map so that they arrive in a suitably useful arrangement. Otherwise you could end up with that highly-experienced unit that you wanted to lead the attack with being stuck at the rear, and have to swap unit positions around to get it to the front. Earlier versions of Civ used square grids instead of a hexagonal one, and you could have any number of units stacked in a single square, so this particular logistical element didn't exist.

There was one RTS game that I used to enjoy however - Sid Meier's Gettysburg. It was a real-time affair, but you could pause the game at any time and while it was paused, give your units orders. When you unpaused, the units would begin carrying out your orders. You could even give units multiple orders while the game was paused, such as form a column > march to a particular location > form into battle line > advance to the designated point. They would then do all those things in sequence once the game was unpaused. It made movement of your forces very manageable - and as it was at the time, battles were all about lines and flanks. Spread your units out too far or have them in arranged in sloppy lines and they wouldn't fight as well, and if your line got pierced or "flanked" your enemy could "roll up your line", clobbering regiment after regiment from the sides and sending your men running away in a panicked retreat.

That was a very rich game in terms of sound effects too - rattling musketry, booming artillery, shouts and orders being yelled, bugle calls, horses neighing. If you focussed on units marching in column, you would even hear authentic period marching tunes being played. The map was three-dimensional, and gaining the "high ground" could make a world of difference to the outcome of a battle. That was a very cool game, but unfortunately it won't run under any OS later than about Win 98.

[fragger]

Wow - the Brave New World EXP really lives up to it's name as an expansion pack.

Civ V was already a fairly deep strategy game. BNW has deepened it exponentially. Not only are there myriad new features and options, but the entire gameplay has been revamped in the areas of Social Policies, Culture and Diplomacy. Cultural Victory is now arrived at in a radically different way than what it was in earlier versions of the game, a way that is in fact far more logical and interesting - and challenging. The old "Utopia Project" is dead and buried... Diplomatic Victory has similarly been improved, to a more real-world conception.

One of the major innovations is the introduction of a World Congress. Once this is established, players can agree (or not) to pass "Resolutions" that will affect all players in the game, and there are no less than 18 of these, the effects of which are many and varied. Just a few examples are the designation of Cultural Heritage Sites, hosting of the International Games, construction of an International Space Station, signing of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, and the hosting of a World's Fair. Some of these will benefit all players who agree to take part (such as the ISS), some will confer extra benefits upon a player who hosts an event such as the International Games or the World's Fair.

I haven't gotten to the World Congress stage yet, in this my first game of BNW. I'll be very interested to get to it.

BNW is what an expansion pack should be, a positive and well conceived improvement of an existing game. I consider myself a Civ V veteran, but this will keep me occupied with the game for at least a few more years to come (if it didn't already). BNW has taken an already wonderful strategy game and boosted it to a whole new level. And it looks really nice, too - well, it already looked nice, but now it looks even nicer :-()

I believe that BNW may be primarily aimed at experienced Civ V players. If you were brand-new to the game and you added BNW before playing, you could find it all a tad overwhelming. The basic game is enough of a learn as it is without diving into this particular deep end. In any case, the Gods and Kings EXP needs to be bought and installed first because BNW builds upon it.

I see sleep-deprivation looming...

[JRD]

I'm glad I don't have it. I am already overwheled trying to understand all nuances of the previous gameplay design and getting yet more features could probably put me off game. The good side is that I have this BNW extension to look for when the version I run starts to get old.  :)

I've now reached the early 20th century and am aiming at a scientific victory. I can see now how I could've started the game when it comes to choosing research branches and buildings to create in my empire but still I believe I can bea it or at least get close. I've been also using all my Great Persons to my benefit. I only had a Great General and I kept it near my troops to make it useful but since it seems to be a fairly peaceful iteration I decided to use it to get a golden age and pump up gold and production all around my cities. As the game progressed more of those Great People were generated and at first I didn't know what to do with them sao I started reading the Civilopedia and search the net for a little info. I have used a couple Great Scietists to boost research and after building the Oxford University I also got another research item for free so it certaily put me up to speed towards reaching the technological level to launch a rocket. Another Great Person was a Great Artist I've used to drop a Culture Bomb and take over a few tiles from Vienna - including an oilfield. They got pissed off but a small gold offer changed their status back to friendly so no harm done  ;D. The Great Merchant was sent on a trade mission with Cape Town resulting in a substantial gold income to me. I see how I could've used my Great Engineer to speed up production of a certain building that would get me a Great Scientist thus leading to more research items delivered on the fly.

These Great People certaily can change the outcome of a game if generated and used to a specific strategy. I am already looking forward to my next playthough so I can bebefit more from those guys apart from all other tactics I am learning thanks to fragger's tips on this topic.  :-X

You know you are playing a great game when you you are not even done with one playthrough but is already planning what you will try on your next through. Only Far Cry 2 and the Assassin's Creed - Ezio saga, had this effect o me.  :-X  :)

[Stiku]

One playthrough is about 10 hours, if you really want to sink in to it it can take even more.
That's the one thing that I like in this game, that you can spend so much time just making sure everything is perfect, and not to be punished by it.

[fragger]

Likewise, Stiku :) I find it to be a very relaxing and absorbing game for those reasons. There's a lot that you can delve into and micromanage if you're so inclined, but you don't have to know every nut and bolt of the game to play it and enjoy it. I like to plumb the depths myself, being the control freak that I am with things like this :-() I get a lot of hours out a game.

I'm happy to hear you're enjoying the game JRD :)

The Great Artist's ability to let off a Culture Bomb disappears with the Gods and Kings EXP, which is a bit of a drag. They didn't program a substitute ability for him, so all he can then do is start a Golden Age or build a Landmark improvement.

However, with the Brave New World pack the functions of Great Artists has totally changed as there are now several different sub-types of them: Great Artists, Great Writers and Great Musicians. They are used in completely different ways from the old Great Artists as they are now part of the process of scoring a Cultural Victory. I won't go into it all here, mainly because I'm still learning it myself, but it's quite a major change. So even though the Artists' Culture Bomb function disappears in G&K, these Greats can have far more impact on your Cultural development with BNW.

Here's a tip for your next playthrough. When you establish your first city, build one or two Scout units immediately and get them out and about (watch out for Barbarians, though - Scouts can fight but they're not very good at it). I always start out by building two Scout units if I'm playing on a map type like Continents or Pangaea. Scouts will reveal the surrounding map quickly as they can move two spaces over any terrain. They can also be useful for quickly finding nearby Ancient Ruins. I don't know if you came across any of these during your game, but a Ruins hex will provide a one-off freebie to whoever first moves a unit into it. The Ruins will disappear when this is done, so only the player who gets to them first will get the freebie. You might get some Gold, some Culture points, a new Tech, a new Citizen in your city, or one of a number of other one-off bonuses. You won't know what bonus you'll get from a Ruins hex until you move a unit into it. One of the best bonuses is when the Ruins hex upgrades the unit that moves into it into a more advanced type. If it's a Scout, that Scout will become an Archer unit, even if you haven't researched Archery yet - but better still, it will retain its ability to move two spaces over any terrain. It'll become a fast Archer unit! And no matter how many times you upgrade that original Scout-cum-Archer unit into the future, it'll keep retaining its "Ignore Terrain" ability. Even if it gets upgraded all the way to a Modern Infantry unit, it will still ignore terrain costs (Archers can't be upgraded to anything past Crossbowmen for a while, but eventually you can upgrade them to Riflemen once you discover Rifling).

For that reason, I try to save any Ruins I find for the Scouts.

Also, getting Scouts out early increases your chances of being the first player to find City-States. If you're the first player to find a particular City-State, you'll get 30 Gold. If another player finds it first, you'll still get Gold when you meet that City-State, but only 15.

The AI players will start exploring right from the beginning of the game, so if you start on a landmass with at least one other player on it but you don't get exploratory units out fairly quickly you might miss out on some of these early bonuses. They're certainly not necessary for a win, but they can be quite useful early on :)

[fragger]

A bit more about Ancient Ruins.

Here is a unit which started out as a Scout. I moved it into an Ancient Ruins hex and got the "upgrade unit" bonus, and it turned into an Archer unit. Since then, I've upgraded it to a Composite Bowman unit (this is a new unit type introduced with Gods and Kings, an intermediate unit between Archer and Crossbowman):

[smg id=7744 align=center width=600]

And here is the unit's info panel. As you can see, it still has the "Ignores Terrain Cost" ability:

[smg id=7745 align=center width=440]

------------------------------------------------------------

If you want to increase your chances of getting this particular bonus from a Ruins hex, you can do this:

When getting ready to start a new game, go to the Advanced Setup screen (choose Single Player>Set Up Game, then click on "Advanced Setup" at the bottom of the window). On the right, below the list of map options etc, is a list of "Advanced Game Options" that can be toggled on or off (these cannot be changed once a game is underway). One of the options is "New Random Seed". This governs certain things in the game, such as the outcomes of battles, but mainly random things such as the appearance of Barbarian settlements - and Ancient Ruins bonuses. By default this option is disabled. While it remains disabled, the outcome of any battle or any random event will play out the same way every time the game is reloaded from a particular save point. Let's say you do a save right before you send a Swordsman unit in to fight, and let's say that when the fight takes place, the Swordsman unit loses five men. If you reload and do the fight again, it will still lose five men. No matter how many times you reload, that unit will always lose five men.

If "New Random Seed" is enabled, the outcome will be different each time you reload. In the above example, you might lose three men in the fight after a reload, or you might lose seven after yet another reload. This also applies to Ancient Ruins. With "New Random Seed" enabled, you can do a save right before you move a unit into the Ruins. If you don't like the bonus you get, simply do a reload and try again. Keep doing this until you get the bonus you want. It might take a number of reloads, but eventually you should get the unit upgrade bonus (a window will appear saying something like "Your unit has found advanced weapons in the ruins").

Incidentally, F11 does a Quicksave and Crtl+F11 does a Quickload. F12 used to do the Quickload, but then Steam went and assigned F12 to be the screenshot key (good one, Steam). Crtl+F11 is now the Quickload key(s).

[JRD]

I'm almost there. I've advanced my tech tree up to the point whre there are anly three or four possible technologies to research thanks to some Great Scientists, one adopted policy that gave me two free technologies and fragger's tips on micromanaging specialists and changing the focus of some cities. I now have two of the three required SS boosters and an SS cockpit. A third SS Booster is on it's way and I should have the remaining parts to build my spaceship in a few rounds.

Is there a way to see how the other players are going? I mean... is it possible to assess their strategies and progress? I'd like to know if there is any other civilization out there building a spacehip too or about to fill out 5 policy trees in order to get to the Utopia Project for instance. Or maybe a score-like tab? I know I get a sort of score every now and then telling me the world's busiest people or world's happier civilization but can I check it somewhere else?

[fragger]

Yep, you can. At the top-right of the display you should see a small button here:

[smg id=7746 align=center width=600]

This is the "Additional Information" button. Clicking this will bring up a list of information windows that you can display (your list will be shorter than this one - the two expansion packs add a few new ones):

[smg id=7747 align=center width=600]

Choose "Victory Progress". This will show you some of the information you were asking about. Once again, your window will look a bit different to this, but the info is essentially the same:

[smg id=7748 align=center width=600]

Under the Science category it will tell you how many players have completed the Apollo Program and thus are in the space race, but not which players or how many spaceship parts they have built. I don't know if there's any way of finding out exactly how far along other players' spaceships may be, unless you have an Open Borders treaty with them and you send a unit into their territory get a direct eyeball on their capital. You would see their spaceship under construction on its launch pad and would be able to see how many components have been added to it. You've no doubt noticed how at the start of each turn, any new developments will appear at the right of the screen when icons drop down from the top and tell you something of importance, such as "So-and-so has declared war on so-and-so" or "One of your units has received a promotion". Whenever another player completes a spaceship component, a message to that effect will drop down there. It won't tell you how many the player has built, so it's up to you to try to keep track.

The Additional Information windows contain quite a bit of useful data on how things are progressing. Be aware that some of the windows have multiple tabs along the top, but it's not immediately apparent that they're tabs. Hovering the pointer over them will make them subtly highlight. The tabs (if there are any) are located right below the window title.

Another useful information window in the list above is "Economic Overview". This lets you see at a glance the resource production of all your cities in table form. It makes it very easy to see which city is producing the most Gold, the most Culture, etc. Some of the table headers in these displays will sort the cities in order of the chosen header if you click on them.

[JRD]

Thanks fragger. After I asked the question I started reading this thread from your first post and found a lot of useful information I didn't remember. Sure enough you already told me where to find it, only I was overwhelmed with all information from the game I would never fiind it again on my own  ::) .

As of now I am officially hooked to this game. I pulled off my first victory!  8)

[smg id=7749]

Built all parts of my spaceship and launched it to Alpha Centauri in 1995. Great game! I am starting a new game right away and will forcus o some other way to achieve victory, maybe Diplomatic this time (or not, depending on my thirst for blood  >:D )

[fragger]

Well done mate :-X :)