Sid Meier's Civilization V announced. (OMG!)

[aurik]

Optimal starting strategy heavily depends on your civ, map style, size, and game speed. Generally I like Scout first, because getting a few extra Ruins is pretty big in the beginning, and once Ruins are farmed out you can leverage the scout for flanking and farm out barbarian encampments for the huge gold boost. Gold is hugely important in the beginning, because buildings and units are fairly reasonably priced.

Building a worker right away isn't super useful: you don't really need immediate happiness (even at king you get 9 free happiness), and a lot of the time the lux tile you spawn next to is not usable anyway until you have a significant chunk of the early tech (ie, calendar lux on marsh/forest, or furs/ivory, or a water lux). Also pushing for expansion before your first policy can be harmful, I made that mistake in my current game and I think it pushed my first policy adoption from turn 60 to turn 80...fortunately I was gunning for honor policy for barb tracking, so really it just delayed my next barb camp payoff; the error will decay to 0 over time instead of compound.

Played a Prince game on Saturday, random/random/8player/Marathon, it rolled up Egypt/Archipelago and I was on a very small island so I rushed pop/tech to Embark and raided Ancient Ruins with my starting Warrior until they had upgraded all the way to Rifleman, won via Domination with 4 Trireme (upgraded to Frigate later) and rifleman just demolishing everything.

Started a new game last night on King, random/random/8/Marathon, rolled up Songhai/Pangaea, so I went scout/warrior and used the huge amount of money (225g per encampment!) to buy more troops. I went Honor policy for barb tracking and probably farmed out 12 or more encampments, bought some settlers, settled a city a few tiles away from the Russian capital to piss them off into going to war with me, then wiped them out, getting 2 Great Generals in the process--popped one for the golden age (+40g/turn heh) and the other I'm keeping for the combat buff. It's been pretty touch-and-go with happiness (currently at -8 with a Russian city being razed + Russian capital puppet), but there aren't many lux tiles around, so there's not much choice besides pushing tech to happiness buildings. In about 15 more turns I'll finally have plantation on Silk which spawned on a forest and access to Circus, so I should be good to go after that.

[DrRuler]

So, I just hit Renaissance era in my first game with 4.5k Gold in my treasury, I have 7 cities built on a standard size map, and no clue what to do with all my money. I'm the second to hit Renaissance (fucking Gandhi must have been a physicist in a past life.) or I would just buy a ton of musketeers and start my conquest of the other nations close by... Any advice on how to best use the gold right now?


Edit: Is there a way to "buy off" a city state to become my own, or should I just blow them up?

[Moosey]

Jeeze, you guys weren't kidding about getting lost in this game lol. This is the first Civ game i've ever played...and, well, the last time I looked at the clock it was around 7PM, then moments later it was 12:30 AM. haha

I still really don't entirely know what i'm doing, but it's fun. :D

[Takedown3]

gold is supposed to be used to buy buildings and units more then ever, in previous games gold wasn't quite as easy to come by i think they shifted focus on purpose. spend that loot SON

[DrRuler]

Is it bad that I accidentally stayed awake until 4:30 last night playing this game, thinking it was midnight? Is it worse I plan on playing it again all night tonight? God damn world conquest is addicting, having a giant death robot kill off thousands of musketeers as you crush the advanced nations feels so good in 1850~

[Telamond]

Is it just me or is it just not worth befriending any city-states other than cultural ones?
Maritime - food, population growth => unhappiness
Militaristic - free units => often low tech ones

[synistar]

All these stories about playing till the butt crack of dawn remind me of Alpha Centauri when you try and quit "Don't go. The drones need you" or the quit/retire screen asking if you want to quit saying "Yes" or "Just one more turn" Yea that 1 turn turns into 200 way too easily.

That said, if I had time I would so buy this game. Darn you borderlands DLC and FF14 and Starcraft.

[GRT]

i befriended all the cultural ones, is about to get started on utopia project by year 1850

[Mugekuge]

I want to play it but game doesn't work on spanish XP (although i should just move to 7 and stop being lazy), hopefully they will fix this issue.

[aurik]

Befriending military citystates is generally good, I was getting artillery and infantry from one in a previous game. Of course, if you're super technologically advanced for some reason then yeah the unit may be crap. But think of it as an investment. On Marathon, the math is: 10g = 1 influence so a decay rate of 0.67 that's 6.7 gold per turn to maintain relations. Every ~17 turns you get a unit, so you're paying about 120 gold per unit. Outright buying units costs 450g+ for even the crappiest unit (but then you can buy it in a city with barracks/armory...)

In addition, you get their lux resource, and also you can use their territory to heal.

In most games I've played I expand quickly, making culture kind of a waste to pay for.

I assume Maritime cultures are good for longer term pop/tech rushes. Never really put them to good use. Often I'm buying off city-states for their lux, to get WLTKDs or solve unhappiness from puppet capitals.

[Trichocyst]

It makes me so sad I'm not playing this right now, but my PC has been broken for almost a month and I don't have money to get everything I need to fix it right away. We would play Civ IV multiplayer into oblivion on many, many occasions. I can't wait to get back into it.

[Takedown3]

any tips on befriending city/states? i can get them easily enough by killing barbs and doing most of the requests but i found shit just wears to quickly, i've never used the partonage policies is it worth it? can you keep city/stats for the entire game easily enough?

[Lurking Badger]

any tips on befriending city/states? i can get them easily enough by killing barbs and doing most of the requests but i found shit just wears to quickly, i've never used the partonage policies is it worth it? can you keep city/stats for the entire game easily enough?

I'd say patronage path and befriending city-states is best used when going for diplomatic victory. Focus on gaining a lot of gold/turn from spamming trading posts. Having lots of gold is never bad since you can buy buildings and units instantly when you need them.

[Maguspk]

Trailers don't really make me want to play but all the positive reviews have me interested, think I'll try the demo.

[falloutboy14]

So, I just hit Renaissance era in my first game with 4.5k Gold in my treasury.

What I generally do with extra money is start research agreements with everyone who has enough money. I've never had an issue with people turning me down.

If you still have extra, could use it to bribe city states. Find some that have resources you need. If you invest in the patronage policies, they'll start giving you great people. In my most recent game, I had about 25 turns in a row of golden years, because city states gave me a few great people all at once.

[Aevis]

one my first game, i've chosen the 2nd lowest difficulty since i just was looking to figure out all the changes and have a fun play. everything's running perfect for me, just crushed china + japan which secured me the whole half of our continent. i'm also on top of pretty much every list and after my gold reached 5k, i started to heavily insta buy units etc. however, one thing is very akward: nobody wants to give me a decent deal on any luxury goods. even the nations which are happy to see me request outrageous deals. like i want silver and they demand wine, spice, ivory, fleece and 200 gold. i must be doing something wrong, since i can't remember that it ever has beend this extreme in civ 4. the "greedy" ones usually requested two resources for one and maybe a little bit of cash, but my civ 5 trade encounters are plain silly so far.

[Misuicide]

I want to play it but game doesn't work on spanish XP (although i should just move to 7 and stop being lazy), hopefully they will fix this issue.

They just patched this today or yesterday. Should work now

[person2007]

Even on quick mode it still takes about 4 hours to get too future tech. The game isnt bad though. I kinda wish there was some kinda Campaign where you pick a country and have to do certain objectives to take over the world.

[Takedown3]

those will come out as the community starts to develop mods and what not. give it a couple weeks and there will be piles of shit to sift thru.

[Indalecia]

Played it a few times, think I'll wait until it has a few patches/mods/expansions under its belt. As it stands, its too damn easy and the AI is absolutely retarded. Missing some of the complexities of IV, but I might be able to get over that if the game actually learns to put up a fight.