Civ V Announced

[Timbuk2]

Game I'm playing now is the first one I'm playing to win,

Meaning you normally play to lose?

Loser.

so I'll get back to you on that one. I also don't road everywhere. If a city is closest to a city on the coast with a harbour, it gets connected to that city alone, so it'll trade through the harbour.

Hmmm, I guess I should be a bit less librul with my roading. If the city ain't on a main thoroughfare for troop movements, and it is on the coast, I won't road it.

Saying that, my economy has always been able to support having all cities roaded. It's only when trying to railroad 'em all too that the shit hits the financial fan.

Much more careful road & railroad layout planning in new game then. Playing as the Ayrabs, so I'm gonna jihad all the rest of the infidel scum.

[EyeKhan]

My economy can never support itself. I have to sell tons of luxuries to everyone else, who all seem to have tons of excess cash, to support my activities.

I haven't started a game since the patch, do you get to destroy buildings? As I go along I realize that some buildings arn't such a good idea and I'd like to tear them down to reduce costs. But alas . . . .

Note - if you kill every city state you meet, they make a global alliance against you forever. That's right, permanent war with city states. It starts small and grows as you keep snuffing them. I really like being the aggressive bad ass in the early game - Aztecs - its a ton of fun. I could never pull that off in Civ4.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Does the railroad bonus also work through harbours?

Meaning you normally play to lose?

Loser.

First game with Catherine, 2nd level, two ages ahead of everyone else I quit.
Second game Napoleon, the everlasting peace bug kicked in and it became a test game.
Finally trying to play a proper game, with proper resistance. I'm 3rd in score and the top 3 is rather close together. Looks like this could be fun.

Playing with the Chinese Chick (don't!), and the Unique thingies are very handy. A crossbowman that can fire twice, libraries that give +4 gold and lots of Great Generals who can be turned into Golden Ages or used and get a +45% combat bonus. Insane. Also getting my culture, gold and happy game in order.

+41 per turn is nice.

My economy can never support itself. I have to sell tons of luxuries to everyone else, who all seem to have tons of excess cash, to support my activities.

Do you check your cities whether they're working on the gold tiles as well? Trade route everything? Specialize your cities? Not every city needs a barracks, not every city needs a Forge or a Workshop, etc.

But what do I know, I still have t win a game

I haven't started a game since the patch, do you get to destroy buildings? As I go along I realize that some buildings arn't such a good idea and I'd like to tear them down to reduce costs. But alas . . . .

I heard you can destroy buildings in the new patch, haven't tried it yet.

[LittleFuzzy]

I've started playing. Haven't found my finances as unmanagable as the rest of you seem to. I had to struggle by the industrial era for the first one, but I was playing on an archipelago map and the city sites were crap. 2nd and 3rd games were fine and 4th isn't proving to be a problem either. Plus some games that got abandoned early, before I got out of the BCs, for various reasons. Might be a difficulty issue, I've only been playing on Prince. If a road can connect to the capital by a harbor, I do that rather than build a road to it, unless I know I've got the finances in proper shape, usually determined by the time I've discovered banking. I do build railroads eventually, but it's not a high priority, partly because I was never entirely sure that production bonus Tim refers to actually kicked in, I didn't see a difference in a few test cases and it is not consistently mentioned in the documentation making me think it was a changed late in development.

I do try to specialize my cities *though everyone ends up getting science-improving structures, the market enhancers, and the workshop* but I'm not certain I do that great a job at it. Except for the second game where my second city was able to effectively go between the Tigris and Euphrates in a Large, small continents map, and had an unbelievable number of flood plain tiles to build trading posts on. I don't let my cities grow too large, I mostly stop their growth at six to eight population until the 20th century with maybe one well-situation city growing *often not the capital, oddly enough* I always emphasize commercial wonders *Chichen Itza, Angkor Wat, Collosus* and largely ignore the military ones and keep my army just a bit smaller than the others around me, relying on my ability to outmaneuver the AI if attacked and attrit them down. I also find it necessary, in tight situations *needing to get every last erg of production, or a city is starving, or I need to pump income* to micromanage what citizens are working on. The AI's priority list is a bit too simple *and actually appears to have gotten a bit worse in the patch* it focuses on maximizing on getting the most output from a tile and then on maximizing whatever its focus actually is. It will invariable choose two tiles producing two food, one production, and one gold over a tile producing four food and one producing 3 production, when you tell it to focus on production, for instance. Except now it doesn't try as hard to keep the city from going into starvation. I can't always improve on its selection for what I want to focus on, but I often can, and it gets easier the larger the city is. In particular, I'm better at avoiding growth than the AI is.

Happiness can be a problem, I rely on trading other luxury resources and sometimes strategic resources for luxuries from other empires, because I can rarely manage to pick up happiness-making wonders, and it's looking like trading may be harder with this new patch, the AIs are again relunctant to do anything for you, even if it benefits them, unless you are fairly equal. If you're larger they'll cut off their nose to spite their face, and if you're weaker then. . . well why trade for what you can just demand. Fuckers. One possible reason I've managed to keep my income fairly steady has been that I usually only had to build 1-3 coloseums and almost never had to build later happiness improvements, and that may change with this patch.

As I said earlier, I do make an effort to specialize. Only one or two cities will bother with military improvements unless I find myself needing to back a very large military for some reason, and they'll build all my units. I don't build happiness improvements unless I really need them. Cultural improvements only get built to provide minimum expansion, generally 1-3 culture for a city, and I'll rely on occasional gold purchases and wonders like Angor Wat and the Hagia Sopia to keep the cities competitive. I'm loving trying out the Egyptians, because their special temple costs no maintenance and also provides 2 happiness. Granaries and gardens almost never get built, if a city can't see reasonable growth without them then it's not a good choice for a city location in the first place. Buildings that increase general production or building-production like the workshop and windmill always get built since they're crucial to building banks, universities, stock exchanges, and public schools in cities. Seaports only get built if the city really needs the extra production, or has more than one water-resource tile which can be worked.

I have not tried a major military game yet, and am not sure I'm going to, it's not a style I particularly care for. I am going to try a small empire culture focus sometime, and it will have some skewed priorities compared to what I normally do. I've won two time victories *not very satisfactory, but either could have easily been a domination victory if I'd really cared to try* and one diplomacy victory. I LOVE liberating conquered civilizations and city-states. I haven't managed to come within spitting distance of a science victory yet, I'm having trouble climbing up the tech tree fast enough past mid-Rennaissance and haven't yet figured out what's slowing me down. I need to get the tech early enough so I can produce the parts, which means I also need some decent production cities and not just one or two strong ones. And without being distracted by having to fight late-game wars.

[EyeKhan]

Do you check your cities whether they're working on the gold tiles as well? Trade route everything? Specialize your cities? Not every city needs a barracks, not every city needs a Forge or a Workshop, etc.

I've been pretty good about not building too many unnecessary things. I have yet to get enough population in a city that I'm comfortable puting specialists in buildings. Right now I'm trying to spike up my city populations so I can do that and work more hexes. But then you have to keep up in the happiness game and that aggravates the gold game. My current game as the Aztecs has me in 2nd place, though I'm a techno & cultural backwater. I have total control of a huge continent (for now) which is the basis of my high score. So I'm trying to make bigger cities so I can produce more gold, tech, and culture by working more hexes. Not sure if that's a good idea or not, tbh. Once Bismark decides to visit, I'm toast.

[Ziggy Stardust]

In the early stages if you have too many horses, which is often, or iron, you can always try to shop around if anyone wants to buy them. You can sell them for a fixed amount. When there's a war going on, check if either has used up all of theirs, since they'll be very keep to buy them. I also first try to get open borders and a pact of cooperation, let it simmer for a few turns, and only then trade luxury good. They're far more inclined to trade fairly when they greet you with "Friend", instead of making you add to your side of the bargain.

I've started playing. Haven't found my finances as unmanagable as the rest of you seem to. I had to struggle by the industrial era for the first one, but I was playing on an archipelago map and the city sites were crap. 2nd and 3rd games were fine and 4th isn't proving to be a problem either. Plus some games that got abandoned early, before I got out of the BCs, for various reasons. Might be a difficulty issue, I've only been playing on Prince. If a road can connect to the capital by a harbor, I do that rather than build a road to it, unless I know I've got the finances in proper shape, usually determined by the time I've discovered banking. I do build railroads eventually, but it's not a high priority, partly because I was never entirely sure that production bonus Tim refers to actually kicked in, I didn't see a difference in a few test cases and it is not consistently mentioned in the documentation making me think it was a changed late in development.

It's also mentioned in the civilopedia. Would be disappointing if all it did was increase movement.

I do try to specialize my cities *though everyone ends up getting science-improving structures, the market enhancers, and the workshop* but I'm not certain I do that great a job at it. Except for the second game where my second city was able to effectively go between the Tigris and Euphrates in a Large, small continents map, and had an unbelievable number of flood plain tiles to build trading posts on. I don't let my cities grow too large, I mostly stop their growth at six to eight population until the 20th century with maybe one well-situation city growing *often not the capital, oddly enough* I always emphasize commercial wonders *Chichen Itza, Angkor Wat, Collosus* and largely ignore the military ones and keep my army just a bit smaller than the others around me, relying on my ability to outmaneuver the AI if attacked and attrit them down. I also find it necessary, in tight situations *needing to get every last erg of production, or a city is starving, or I need to pump income* to micromanage what citizens are working on. The AI's priority list is a bit too simple *and actually appears to have gotten a bit worse in the patch* it focuses on maximizing on getting the most output from a tile and then on maximizing whatever its focus actually is. It will invariable choose two tiles producing two food, one production, and one gold over a tile producing four food and one producing 3 production, when you tell it to focus on production, for instance. Except now it doesn't try as hard to keep the city from going into starvation. I can't always improve on its selection for what I want to focus on, but I often can, and it gets easier the larger the city is. In particular, I'm better at avoiding growth than the AI is.

Early game they get to grow to about 6, later in the game whatever's possible. Usually when I have happiness to spare I start thinking about new cities, but the game I'm in right now I'm going to use the +40 to let the existing cities grow and see whether farms/specialist is a playable option. On the AAR's on civfanatics I've seen people spawning great Scientists left and right. I usually don't play like that. Farms are used for excess food so that the production tiles can be worked.

Production also often determines what role the city is going to play. Production tiles for production cities obviously, and the food rich cities for science.

Happiness can be a problem, I rely on trading other luxury resources and sometimes strategic resources for luxuries from other empires, because I can rarely manage to pick up happiness-making wonders, and it's looking like trading may be harder with this new patch, the AIs are again relunctant to do anything for you, even if it benefits them, unless you are fairly equal. If you're larger they'll cut off their nose to spite their face, and if you're weaker then. . . well why trade for what you can just demand. Fuckers. One possible reason I've managed to keep my income fairly steady has been that I usually only had to build 1-3 coloseums and almost never had to build later happiness improvements, and that may change with this patch.

I was cautious with coloseums as well, but now I tend to build more trade posts, to finance coloseums, which provide happiness which cause more frequent Golden Ages. Not sure if this is efficient, but this game I haven't had any money/happiness problems while also building every culture building in every city. Policies are pouring in as well, so I think it's working rather well.

I'm just starting to appreciate social policies and it pays to not ignore culture.

As I said earlier, I do make an effort to specialize. Only one or two cities will bother with military improvements unless I find myself needing to back a very large military for some reason, and they'll build all my units. I don't build happiness improvements unless I really need them. Cultural improvements only get built to provide minimum expansion, generally 1-3 culture for a city, and I'll rely on occasional gold purchases and wonders like Angor Wat and the Hagia Sopia to keep the cities competitive. I'm loving trying out the Egyptians, because their special temple costs no maintenance and also provides 2 happiness. Granaries and gardens almost never get built, if a city can't see reasonable growth without them then it's not a good choice for a city location in the first place. Buildings that increase general production or building-production like the workshop and windmill always get built since they're crucial to building banks, universities, stock exchanges, and public schools in cities. Seaports only get built if the city really needs the extra production, or has more than one water-resource tile which can be worked.

Granaries means a citizen on a production tile instead of on a food tile. Or maintaining an extra specialist. Once you have room for specialist through libs and markets I can never have enough food. I still can stagnate the city, have as much production plus specialist.

I have not tried a major military game yet, and am not sure I'm going to, it's not a style I particularly care for. I am going to try a small empire culture focus sometime, and it will have some skewed priorities compared to what I normally do. I've won two time victories *not very satisfactory, but either could have easily been a domination victory if I'd really cared to try* and one diplomacy victory. I LOVE liberating conquered civilizations and city-states. I haven't managed to come within spitting distance of a science victory yet, I'm having trouble climbing up the tech tree fast enough past mid-Rennaissance and haven't yet figured out what's slowing me down. I need to get the tech early enough so I can produce the parts, which means I also need some decent production cities and not just one or two strong ones. And without being distracted by having to fight late-game wars.

Granaries and Science Specialists

Just think, one specialist nets you +3 science and builds towards a Great Scientist. For just 10 cities that's +30 Science each turn. I'm not sure if that +30 also gets adjusted with the percentages from libs and universities, but I think it might. So that would be +45. Nothing to sneeze at. If you also have a watermill in a couple of cities, it gets better. If you ally a couple of maritime state it gets insane.

Provided you have the happiness to support them all of course.

edit: Just looked at workshops, and you're right. I've been a doofus not building them more often.

[Wraith]

I've started playing. Haven't found my finances as unmanagable as the rest of you seem to. I had to struggle by the industrial era for the first one, but I was playing on an archipelago map and the city sites were crap. 2nd and 3rd games were fine and 4th isn't proving to be a problem either. Plus some games that got abandoned early, before I got out of the BCs, for various reasons. Might be a difficulty issue, I've only been playing on Prince. If a road can connect to the capital by a harbor, I do that rather than build a road to it, unless I know I've got the finances in proper shape, usually determined by the time I've discovered banking. I do build railroads eventually, but it's not a high priority, partly because I was never entirely sure that production bonus Tim refers to actually kicked in, I didn't see a difference in a few test cases and it is not consistently mentioned in the documentation making me think it was a changed late in development.

You can mouse over the hammer production to see all the bonuses that are getting applied. You'll see the + if it's getting the railroad bonus. (was it +100%?) It can actually be a bit hidden, because it doesn't just double (or whatever) your previous production, but it's tallied up with all the other bonuses, and by the time you build railroads you probably have bunches.

[Ziggy Stardust]

How do you guys deal with annex/raze/puppet?

I don't like puppets, they be building the wrong buildings, growing too fast and I simply don't trust them. Hardly ever have puppets more than a few turns and either raze them if there's no good resources nearby or not in a strategic location or I know I can have a settler there soon. I made a giant screw up late last night when I razed an insignificant city which did have the Machu Pichu. Didn't notice it until I got the message "Catherine has built the MP".

I used to annex about every city I conquered, but those courthouses take 5 maintenance each. This has been crippling my economy, so I have been making sure I have settlers on stand by whenever I go conquering. Last time I did I took London and 3 other cities, had 3 settlers nearby, razed the 3 (destroying the Machu in one of them ) settled in place. I think that's the best option since it doesn't give you from occupied cities, the land is usually completely worked and you don't waste many turns building an expensive courthouse which will be a strain on your bank account for the rest of the game. Also if you're not happy with the position of a city, the Ai does make some peculiar decisions on city placement sometimes, you change it.

edit: Just read on civfanatics discussion on puppets after the patch. The puppets will be geared towards gold first, science second (also some culture to expand borders and coloseums to compensate for growth). They won't build any more bs buildings as barracks and such. So there goes my puppet analysis out of the window. They actually seem to be a really good options after patch.

Oh well, that's another way to keep the game interesting. Patches which change all the rules.

[EyeKhan]

I've been working puppets in as I need them and as happiness is available. There's nothing worse than seeing a puppet building a fucking barracks. Sounds like they fixed that though . . .

[LittleFuzzy]

How do you guys deal with annex/raze/puppet?

I don't like puppets, they be building the wrong buildings, growing too fast and I simply don't trust them. Hardly ever have puppets more than a few turns and either raze them if there's no good resources nearby or not in a strategic location or I know I can have a settler there soon. I made a giant screw up late last night when I razed an insignificant city which did have the Machu Pichu. Didn't notice it until I got the message "Catherine has built the MP".

I used to annex about every city I conquered, but those courthouses take 5 maintenance each. This has been crippling my economy, so I have been making sure I have settlers on stand by whenever I go conquering. Last time I did I took London and 3 other cities, had 3 settlers nearby, razed the 3 (destroying the Machu in one of them ) settled in place. I think that's the best option since it doesn't give you from occupied cities, the land is usually completely worked and you don't waste many turns building an expensive courthouse which will be a strain on your bank account for the rest of the game. Also if you're not happy with the position of a city, the Ai does make some peculiar decisions on city placement sometimes, you change it.

edit: Just read on civfanatics discussion on puppets after the patch. The puppets will be geared towards gold first, science second (also some culture to expand borders and coloseums to compensate for growth). They won't build any more bs buildings as barracks and such. So there goes my puppet analysis out of the window. They actually seem to be a really good options after patch.

Oh well, that's another way to keep the game interesting. Patches which change all the rules.

I hadn't realized the buildings puppets put up were costing ME maintenance. I thought the point of puppets was that they weren't REALLY my empire. I guess that's more of the explanation of gold issues I faced in my first game.
In my current post-patch game as the Egyptians, I've had a really large grasslands/forest/hills area to expand into. I've made 10 cities so far, and there's room for at least another one or two, though it is the 20th century now. I finally got in two wars with Songhai because they didn't seem to understand that when I asked them not to build cities near me, I meant they should stay on their own side of those passes through that nice long continental mountain chain covering almost the breadth of my territory. I just raze their cities because I'm not at all interested in holding on to that territory.
It looks like I may actually manage to pull off a science victory in this game. But I'm troubled, I don't know how it happened, but suddenly my finances are a mess. Can't just be the introduction of railroads. I took all my cities off gold production and have switched to building my new stock exchanges, during a golden age, and I'm still losing money. DURING A GOLDEN AGE. Horrifying. I popped a Great Artist to extend it so I get more production-enhanced construction for the exchanges, and I guess when it ends I'll have to slow some cities construction by switching them to a gold focus again, and bring in the stock exchanges in a phased manner.

[EyeKhan]

I hadn't realized the buildings puppets put up were costing ME maintenance. I thought the point of puppets was that they weren't REALLY my empire. I guess that's more of the explanation of gold issues I faced in my first game.
In my current post-patch game as the Egyptians, I've had a really large grasslands/forest/hills area to expand into. I've made 10 cities so far, and there's room for at least another one or two, though it is the 20th century now. I finally got in two wars with Songhai because they didn't seem to understand that when I asked them not to build cities near me, I meant they should stay on their own side of those passes through that nice long continental mountain chain covering almost the breadth of my territory. I just raze their cities because I'm not at all interested in holding on to that territory.
It looks like I may actually manage to pull off a science victory in this game. But I'm troubled, I don't know how it happened, but suddenly my finances are a mess. Can't just be the introduction of railroads. I took all my cities off gold production and have switched to building my new stock exchanges, during a golden age, and I'm still losing money. DURING A GOLDEN AGE. Horrifying. I popped a Great Artist to extend it so I get more production-enhanced construction for the exchanges, and I guess when it ends I'll have to slow some cities construction by switching them to a gold focus again, and bring in the stock exchanges in a phased manner.

What difficulty are you playing?

[LittleFuzzy]

What difficulty are you playing?

I play almost exclusively at Prince. I don't particularly care for difficulty that is solely a matter of one side or the other "cheating."

I did finish that game with a science victory, by the time I finished with the stock exchanges most cities didn't have much else I needed them to have for their infrastructure so I was able to just set all my non-production cities to either science or gold and sit back and wait for the rest of the tech I needed for my spaceship components.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I had to halt my production yesterday as well. Had been pumping out buildings, got in a war needed units and before I knew it I had used up all my income on maintenance. And I needed income because I would get rifleman in a couple of turns and needed to upgrade fast because them arabs have been eyeing my border as well with cavalry and riflemen of their own.

Barring two cities who stayed on wonder production I micromanaged all my other cities to work the gold tiles and food tiles, putting specialists on markets and banks and if possible on libraries (which all yield +2 science because of Rationalism policy) and from 20 cities I managed to find 43 gold and 34 science extra. Also went into diplomacy to sell my excess luxury and strategic goods. The AI will give 700-800 gold for luxury goods or 300-400 gold for strategic good.

When I was done I had 5000+ gold with 48 income Upgraded all my swords and pikes to riflemen. Not sure if that was the reason Arabia never attacked.

[EyeKhan]

I play almost exclusively at Prince. I don't particularly care for difficulty that is solely a matter of one side or the other "cheating."

I did finish that game with a science victory, by the time I finished with the stock exchanges most cities didn't have much else I needed them to have for their infrastructure so I was able to just set all my non-production cities to either science or gold and sit back and wait for the rest of the tech I needed for my spaceship components.

Is Prince straight up your brain against the game's AI with no 'cheat' bonus' either way? I've been playing on King which is pretty challenging but not too difficult.

[EyeKhan]

I had to halt my production yesterday as well. Had been pumping out buildings, got in a war needed units and before I knew it I had used up all my income on maintenance. And I needed income because I would get rifleman in a couple of turns and needed to upgrade fast because them arabs have been eyeing my border as well with cavalry and riflemen of their own.

Barring two cities who stayed on wonder production I micromanaged all my other cities to work the gold tiles and food tiles, putting specialists on markets and banks and if possible on libraries (which all yield +2 science because of Rationalism policy) and from 20 cities I managed to find 43 gold and 34 science extra. Also went into diplomacy to sell my excess luxury and strategic goods. The AI will give 700-800 gold for luxury goods or 300-400 gold for strategic good.

When I was done I had 5000+ gold with 48 income Upgraded all my swords and pikes to riflemen. Not sure if that was the reason Arabia never attacked.

I'm still in the same old game - There's just two of us now, me and Bismark. He's in the future era and I just entered the modern. He's gobbled up everyone else so his empire's bigger than mine now so I basically have no chance of winning this game. I'm thinking about quitting but I've been pushing along to take advantage of learning opportunities. I think I might get nuclear weapons and blast him, just to see what it looks like.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Maybe he got some nukes of his own and then it's: armageddon baby!

Maybe save the game, declare war and see how long you can hold on could be fun. IF you have some decent chokepoints. Not sure how this works with planes and all, since I'm only just started to research them.

Them AI's really do put out some serious science in the later games. I've been doing anything to max out science to catch up to them, but it only seems I'm able to consolidate the gap I have. On the other hand, my culture is booming (Sistine Chapel \o/) so maybe some rationalism policies will help me bridge the gap. Fun times!

[EyeKhan]

He's on his own continent and I'm on mine. I'm still on a prepatch game so the AI's not doing much with boats. If he and I had a land bridge, I'd already be dead I think. I can make tanks now so I'm thinking about floating a bunch over to his world, declaring war and doing a sneak attack then razing what I capture. Heh. How's that for evil? On the other hand, my army consists of knights and swordsmen, so I'd have to do some serious upgrading a building and I'm not sure I want to do that in a hopeless game.

[LittleFuzzy]

He's on his own continent and I'm on mine. I'm still on a prepatch game so the AI's not doing much with boats. If he and I had a land bridge, I'd already be dead I think. I can make tanks now so I'm thinking about floating a bunch over to his world, declaring war and doing a sneak attack then razing what I capture. Heh. How's that for evil? On the other hand, my army consists of knights and swordsmen, so I'd have to do some serious upgrading a building and I'm not sure I want to do that in a hopeless game.

I had a solution for that situation in my first game *though my units and the Chinese had technological parity* Dick around very tentatively with your ships until you get range upgrades. If you can bring down a cities defenses enough for a successful amphibious attack great, otherwise wait until you can slowly bring them down from beyond their range, then send in the amphibious unit. Make certain that first city you attack is not one of your opponents own citiies but one he seized from another civilization. When you capture it, liberate the city rather than taking if yourself. You will have a permanent Open Borders agreement with them, and they will not be inclined to give one to Bismark, providing you with a safe zone from which to operate. Bismark also isn't going to be inclined to start a new war with the guy while you're menacing his cities. Start working your way down his coasts, giving cities you capture to the liberated AI *or liberating other civiilizations* as you go. Your real goal is to have a safe base from which to attrit down his units with artillery and quick in-and-out cavalry strikes from safe areas. The problem with liberating city-states is they'll declare permanent war on the person who conquered them, so Bismark's units will just sweep back in.

I was strong navally in that game though *despite never having more then three, finally four ships*. No one, not even the English, could compete with my commerce and Lighthouse enhanced frigates, who'd just outmaneuver enemy ships until I could focus them down from beyond their range or with multiple ships. My first war with the Chinese lasted some 150 turns because neither of us could really reach each other. China kept building ironclads to try and drive me away, but even when they somehow managed to push four at once, I just fell back to where my cannon and artillery could range on them as well, from liberated Japanese provinces.

[EyeKhan]

That's a very intersting strategy. I forgot all about that liberating captured cities thing. Right now my navy consists of one destroyer, though. I'd have to tool up to get that going.... As I said, I'm not sure if I'm going to continue this game or start a new one. I'll post the results if I go for it.

[Timbuk2]

I've started playing. Haven't found my finances as unmanagable as the rest of you seem to. I had to struggle by the industrial era for the first one, but I was playing on an archipelago map and the city sites were crap. 2nd and 3rd games were fine and 4th isn't proving to be a problem either. Plus some games that got abandoned early, before I got out of the BCs, for various reasons. Might be a difficulty issue, I've only been playing on Prince. If a road can connect to the capital by a harbor, I do that rather than build a road to it, unless I know I've got the finances in proper shape, usually determined by the time I've discovered banking. I do build railroads eventually, but it's not a high priority, partly because I was never entirely sure that production bonus Tim refers to actually kicked in, I didn't see a difference in a few test cases and it is not consistently mentioned in the documentation making me think it was a changed late in development.

I do try to specialize my cities *though everyone ends up getting science-improving structures, the market enhancers, and the workshop* but I'm not certain I do that great a job at it. Except for the second game where my second city was able to effectively go between the Tigris and Euphrates in a Large, small continents map, and had an unbelievable number of flood plain tiles to build trading posts on. I don't let my cities grow too large, I mostly stop their growth at six to eight population until the 20th century with maybe one well-situation city growing *often not the capital, oddly enough* I always emphasize commercial wonders *Chichen Itza, Angkor Wat, Collosus* and largely ignore the military ones and keep my army just a bit smaller than the others around me, relying on my ability to outmaneuver the AI if attacked and attrit them down. I also find it necessary, in tight situations *needing to get every last erg of production, or a city is starving, or I need to pump income* to micromanage what citizens are working on. The AI's priority list is a bit too simple *and actually appears to have gotten a bit worse in the patch* it focuses on maximizing on getting the most output from a tile and then on maximizing whatever its focus actually is. It will invariable choose two tiles producing two food, one production, and one gold over a tile producing four food and one producing 3 production, when you tell it to focus on production, for instance. Except now it doesn't try as hard to keep the city from going into starvation. I can't always improve on its selection for what I want to focus on, but I often can, and it gets easier the larger the city is. In particular, I'm better at avoiding growth than the AI is.

Happiness can be a problem, I rely on trading other luxury resources and sometimes strategic resources for luxuries from other empires, because I can rarely manage to pick up happiness-making wonders, and it's looking like trading may be harder with this new patch, the AIs are again relunctant to do anything for you, even if it benefits them, unless you are fairly equal. If you're larger they'll cut off their nose to spite their face, and if you're weaker then. . . well why trade for what you can just demand. Fuckers. One possible reason I've managed to keep my income fairly steady has been that I usually only had to build 1-3 coloseums and almost never had to build later happiness improvements, and that may change with this patch.

As I said earlier, I do make an effort to specialize. Only one or two cities will bother with military improvements unless I find myself needing to back a very large military for some reason, and they'll build all my units. I don't build happiness improvements unless I really need them. Cultural improvements only get built to provide minimum expansion, generally 1-3 culture for a city, and I'll rely on occasional gold purchases and wonders like Angor Wat and the Hagia Sopia to keep the cities competitive. I'm loving trying out the Egyptians, because their special temple costs no maintenance and also provides 2 happiness. Granaries and gardens almost never get built, if a city can't see reasonable growth without them then it's not a good choice for a city location in the first place. Buildings that increase general production or building-production like the workshop and windmill always get built since they're crucial to building banks, universities, stock exchanges, and public schools in cities. Seaports only get built if the city really needs the extra production, or has more than one water-resource tile which can be worked.

I have not tried a major military game yet, and am not sure I'm going to, it's not a style I particularly care for. I am going to try a small empire culture focus sometime, and it will have some skewed priorities compared to what I normally do. I've won two time victories *not very satisfactory, but either could have easily been a domination victory if I'd really cared to try* and one diplomacy victory. I LOVE liberating conquered civilizations and city-states. I haven't managed to come within spitting distance of a science victory yet, I'm having trouble climbing up the tech tree fast enough past mid-Rennaissance and haven't yet figured out what's slowing me down. I need to get the tech early enough so I can produce the parts, which means I also need some decent production cities and not just one or two strong ones. And without being distracted by having to fight late-game wars.

Wow. You play with a really ... itty bitty ... picky style.

~

I tend to build most buildings in most cities, really don't specialise much.

I certainly build all the early buildings in every city; monument, temple, granary, library, colosseum, windmill, watermill (if poss.), theatre, lighthouse (if poss.) etc etc. Go for all-out growth and production early on, then later start to specialise a little. I never restrict growth, and aim to keep food levels above 5 in every city. I tend to move citizens around, particularly when building wonders when I'll want to increase productivity.

On King level, Gold, happiness, science and culture are generally plentiful by the mid-stages of my games - renaissance heading into industrial.

I don't build barracks and forge and other military buildings until later in the game. Then I build military buildings in about half my cities, and turn them over to churning out military units, which is when I start to pick fights with others. The other half of the cities carry on building later culture, science, production and happiness buildings.

Played a very similar style in Civ 4. Works for me for domination. I guess if you're going for another type of victory, cultural or tech or whatever, then specialising may come more to the fore.

How do you guys deal with annex/raze/puppet?

I never puppet and rarely annex. I annex only when I take over a city that has a strategic or luxury resource I want, or is a particularly pleasant looking city that I want for myself. Otherwise it's raze, raze, raze all the way. I've found my happiness can't take more than about 4 annexed cities at a time anyway. And puppeting just doesn't suit me as I'm very controlling about how a city uses its citizens.

~

Discovered that harbour doesn't work if your capital ain't on the coast. Which makes sense I suppose ... but meh.

Also I've found that building a caravel once it's been researched, and setting it to auto-explore is a good move, early on. It will find quite a few wonders in the oceans which helps your happiness.

[LittleFuzzy]

Wow. You play with a really ... itty bitty ... picky style.

And puppeting just doesn't suit me as I'm very controlling about how a city uses its citizens.

Pot, Kettle. I usually won't control how a city uses its citizens beyond setting a focus, unless it's decided to let the sucker starve.

[EyeKhan]

So I researched and built a nuclear weapon and nuked Dortmund without cause or warning. It was really very pretty. Just for fun I went and offered peace to Bismark immediately after and he's like "you aren't serious, right?" Very put out. So I started a new game, King, standard sized continents, as Rome. Boy it's a lot more crowded, balistas totally rock, and looks like it's me or the Japanese practically right from the start. They set up two cities right next door to mine, ffs. Did they really expect me not to burn them?

[NGS]

Eye, are you gonna keep laying it on him? Or is that the nuke that says "Hi, I got you a little bit, go ahead and splatter me"?

Playing as China with 10 civs on an Earth map. I'm in western Europe and am in the process of slaying Lawrence of Arabia, albeit with a few possible hiccups in the near future. Meanwhile Elizabeth has complete control of Africa, is at least two tech levels ahead of me, and is making 250 gold per turn with 6k in the bank. I'm only +15 with 900. This probably won't end well. I mistakenly agreed to peace with her after an earlier war, and she's set up a city in Italy to which she's bringing riflemen, most likely to fight my musketmen. Not good. She's got loads of coal as well, and I haven't even researched it!

Oh, and like whoever else said it earlier, I'm loving China's two-attack-per-turn crossbowmen.

[Loki]

Why can't anyone spell Bismarck correctly?

[Khendraja'aro]

I can!

[Loki]

You're a German; you don't count.

[EyeKhan]

Eye, are you gonna keep laying it on him? Or is that the nuke that says "Hi, I got you a little bit, go ahead and splatter me"?

Playing as China with 10 civs on an Earth map. I'm in western Europe and am in the process of slaying Lawrence of Arabia, albeit with a few possible hiccups in the near future. Meanwhile Elizabeth has complete control of Africa, is at least two tech levels ahead of me, and is making 250 gold per turn with 6k in the bank. I'm only +15 with 900. This probably won't end well. I mistakenly agreed to peace with her after an earlier war, and she's set up a city in Italy to which she's bringing riflemen, most likely to fight my musketmen. Not good. She's got loads of coal as well, and I haven't even researched it!

Oh, and like whoever else said it earlier, I'm loving China's two-attack-per-turn crossbowmen.

Naw, I abandoned that game. I even had a second nuke for him, but that game was hopeless.

In current game, I wiped out the Japanese - I had two cities, they had eight. That's what happens when you expand too fast. Then I kicked the Brits in the teeth for putting a city right in the middle of an open spot in the center of my empire. Got two good cities from them, burned three. Second war with them didn't go so well. I need to upgrade my military. The awesome Legion/balistas combo is outmatched now.

[EyeKhan]

You're a German; you don't count.

Dude! It's the Internet!

[Timbuk2]

Pot, Kettle.

Touché

I usually won't control how a city uses its citizens beyond setting a focus, unless it's decided to let the sucker starve.

Never actually tried setting a focus. Might see how well a growth focus works early on, followed by a productivity focus.

~

Playing as the Germans in current game. Lots of fun. Barbarian camps when conquered have a 50% chance of giving gold and a barbarian. Pretty early you have a mass of barbarians rampaging around the map which is great for early exploration.

In early dealings with other nations, they have a lot of respect for you cos of your military might, and are more generous in trading. Far less likely to declare too.

Seems the game limits the number of units you can have though. I got to a point where I had 18 barbarians. An exclamation mark appeared in the info bar at the top. Hovering the mouse over it said that since I'd exceeded 17 units, my overall productivity was reduced by 10%. I'm assuming the more units you go beyond that point, the more your productivity is reduced.

Perhaps the size of your empire makes a difference; the larger it is the more units you're allowed to have.

In any case I ended up deleting new units if they were given to keep myself under the limit.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Discovered that harbour doesn't work if your capital ain't on the coast. Which makes sense I suppose ... but meh.

You know harbours work once you've linked your capital to a coastal city with a harbour, right?