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

[Eggroll]

How do you deal with Cultural Pressure from other civs when it comes to differing ideologies? I can't even find a clear answer as to how it's calculated. Cause I've got -45 Happiness from that crap and there's really not too many other sources of happiness I can get at this point because I have every single luxury resource, am friends with mercantile city states, have almost all the happiness related social policies and all my cities have all of the happiness buildings, plus various wonders.

I'm going for a science win on an marathon game (King difficulty) and I'm almost a full era ahead of everybody else but my happiness was pretty low before this started and now that I've compensated as much as I can at the moment I'm still at -2 Happiness. I guess if it gets super bad I can switch ideologies but I'd rather not because Order has some good science related policies.

You want to start raising your culture. Your own culture "defends" against other civs tourism so the higher it is the more they have to push their own tourism to start gaining influence in your empire. Try to avoid anything that increases their tourism as well, things like open borders or sending trade routes to civs with other ideologies. If you have enough delegates for the world congress you can also nominate a world ideology will give your own ideology a lot more pressure and reduce the unhappiness.

[Lucavi]

Tourism is defended by culture, so the best way to block someone else from attaining a culture victory is to slow down their acquisition of tourism. I'd recommend bribing others to go to war with them if possible and/or attempting to sack one of their major cities. Even if you later lose the city, you'll absorb a large portion of their tourism (since artifacts are placed into museums/ect.) and any that aren't outright destroyed in the transition (lowering their tourism) will go to you. Also, as previously stated, tourism effects can be enhanced by having friendly relations with a civ, or blunted somewhat by having unfriendly relations. Even if you fail to take a city, the simple act of attacking them is likely to result in them hating you for awhile, slowing their cultural influence over you.

This is really only a problem with wide cities that struggle to build up a lot of culture, or cities that had low production early on and couldn't get some of the wonders. Civs (bots or otherwise) that have absurdly high culture tend to have a few cities with everything packed into them (tradition is great for small empires, I believe, and will have LOTS of culture, food and happiness with 1-4 cities), so sacking just one of them can turn the tide.

[Kuishen]

Yeah, I'd probably still be in the green if I hadn't gone SUPEROMGWTF heavy into growth rate. I have +50% growth rate, 40% when at war (religion, temple of artemis, social policy and I'm sure I forgot something else), which is why my science is so ridiculous. I'll be fine to win the game I was just annoyed that I went from being perfectly fine to super unhappy as soon as somebody else managed to get an ideology.

To give you an idea of how ridiculous my growth rate is, before I was in the red I was gaining population at the rate you'd normally expect for a regular game, but I'm on Marathon.

[Kaope]

Seriously, what's the trick in winning this game? played this game so many times, and never won any of them at all.

[Kuishen]

After the first 100 turns or so you should know what type of victory you want to go for based on your surroundings and what the other civs are doing, and then just go for that. You can also get Diplomatic victory pretty much regardless of what you do now with how much money trade routes gets you because you can just buy votes from city-states.

[Lucavi]

Seriously, what's the trick in winning this game? played this game so many times, and never won any of them at all.

To second what Kuishen said, you should have a rough goal based on your starting terrain and sometimes, once you see who your neighbors are. Having Alexander, Askia and Attila as your neighbors is going to drastically change how you approach the game than if you had Polynesia and India as bunk-mates. Typically I wind up going for culture or diplomatic wins, but many times I'll do those only after I've scienced my way up to ubertech and have cleared out at least one or two of the "world enemies". I don't play on Diety, though, unless I'm using a "NO CHEATING AI" mod to even the score (I'm not sure if the AI makes more logical designs at higher difficulties aside from the standard massive bonuses to everything).

Early game, focus on your single city unless your scouts turn up some sort of unreasonably sweet plot of land and goodies, or you can "smell" a land-grabbing rival civ preparing to settle on lands that are yours by right (OR MIGHT). If you're a wonders-whore like myself, focus on hammers hammers hammers and frustrate the neighbors a bit with a few early wonders, then go from there.

My "typical" route when I'm an isolated city (not a lot of warmongers around or massive stretches of barbarian-happy land) is to do Tradition, found 3 cities in rocky terrain for massive hammers (one with jungle for science) and one city near a looping river for massive food, cart the food off to my other cities, then spam every wonder I can get my greedy hands on. Eventually the hammers turn to troop production and the food builds to high science (along with early access to some swank wonders) and I'll pretty much lead everyone. If you have barbarian heaven or bully neighbors, rolling with Honor is perfectly acceptable, but beware your happiness if you start getting too wide with the blood (land) of your enemies. The money is sweet, though, and you should always rape their soldiers and barbarians before taking their land.

One thing I'd caution against, though, unless you have a civ that supports it (one guy steals tech from plundered cities, which is pretty cool) is going to war too much, or allowing a bot to fight a protracted war with you UNLESS YOU ARE WINNING THAT WAR. War slows down everything. You towns can't work their best because of plundered tiles. You can't nab wonders because you have to churn out troops. You can't explore as well because you have to dedicate your troops to pushing and defending. It turns into a bog. One of the few times I'll allow myself to stay at war for awhile is if I have a type of troop with a special bonus that I want all the way to end-game, like the Zuluu Impi or Japanese Samurai.

[Kuishen]

Shoshone Pathfinder 4 lyphe. For real though Diplomatic victory is super boring now, I generally turn it off in my games.

[Lucavi]

I lost one time through diplo because I had 30 votes and click-spammed to raise them, accidentally giving them to Harald Bluetooth. I have no idea why your civ isn't the default selected civ for that, but its kinda silly.

[Purrrfect]

...one city near a looping river for massive food, cart the food off to my other cities,...

Is this a feature of BNW? I've never seen a way to move food from one city to another, but I only have G&K atm.

[Kuishen]

Trade Routes, you can use them to trade with other civs for gold and science, or your own cities to give food or production.

[Lucavi]

Is this a feature of BNW? I've never seen a way to move food from one city to another, but I only have G&K atm.

Trade routeees! Can haul off food or supply from city to city (and with your teammate's cities). I believe the food and hammers come from nowhere, as I haven't seen the numbers actually drop when doing it. I think its just bonus food and hammers because you could have used that same trade route to get more money by linking it to another civ.

[BaneTheBrawler]

yeah, its just a bonus, it doesnt detract from the source city. trade routes are probably the best feature of BNW.

[Aleth]

Does anyone else have trouble fielding ancient and classical era armies in Brave New World?

I found I could have a lot of fun in Gods & Kings with a few well placed cities (regardless of which civ I play as) and then going off on empire-expanding wars. With BnW all the gold from sea and river tiles seems to have gone and I'm left with these new trade routes which don't even cover the cost of a tiny army with a couple of melee guys and archers. Gone are the Alexander/Khan/Hannibal/Romanesque wars you could wage. If a war lasts for more than a few turns it seems to be crippling.

Everyone I play with seems to have been reduced to sitting back and farming wonders and pumping out science. Does anyone have a non-civ specific way to afford a reasonable army for both offence and defence. It seems the upkeep free garrisons of the tradition culture tree are a no-brainer for defence but is there a way to keep early troops on the march outside your territory without smashing your economy? (Only playing on prince with friends btw).

[Bregor]

Does anyone else have trouble fielding ancient and classical era armies in Brave New World?

I found I could have a lot of fun in Gods & Kings with a few well placed cities (regardless of which civ I play as) and then going off on empire-expanding wars. With BnW all the gold from sea and river tiles seems to have gone and I'm left with these new trade routes which don't even cover the cost of a tiny army with a couple of melee guys and archers. Gone are the Alexander/Khan/Hannibal/Romanesque wars you could wage. If a war lasts for more than a few turns it seems to be crippling.

Everyone I play with seems to have been reduced to sitting back and farming wonders and pumping out science. Does anyone have a non-civ specific way to afford a reasonable army for both offence and defence. It seems the upkeep free garrisons of the tradition culture tree are a no-brainer for defence but is there a way to keep early troops on the march outside your territory without smashing your economy? (Only playing on prince with friends btw).

Yeah I wish Honor had something that reduced the cost of a standing army, would make more sense. I haven't played BNW yet (yay backlog) but from what I've read you really need to maximize trade routes to make sure they generate gold, and explore as much as possible to find the best ones. Sea trade routes earn more gold. Also learn the techs that give you more routes quickly.

More info here: http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/I...de_route_(Civ5)

[Aleth]

I'm convinced the new trade routes are a bummer on larger maps sizes if you don't start near any city states and you only have one belligerent neighbour. I get that the intention is to force players to interact but you can very easily end up in trouble if barbarians are harassing you and your neighbour is an ass!

[BaneTheBrawler]

Yeah.

Also, downside to playing on marathon: turn 350 I realized I made a mistake ~280 turns ago that cost me a lot. Basically have to restart the game, unless I want to do an underdog (I don't).

[Aleth]

Funnily, going to war works well in slower game modes because units fight, move and heal faster in comparison to the passage of time. If you can nurse a small crack-team of units through battles you can go around burning everyone else down, safe in the knowledge it'll take them ages to raise a defensive army.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Yeah. That's why I like it. It's just frustrating to sink a whole day into my chosen strategy, only to realize I made a mistake and have to do it all again.

Must make for a pretty convincing religion, though, from the perspective of my citizens: I always pick God-king (because BOW TO ME), and it must seem to my little peons that I have godlike foresight and even precognition.

[Aleth]

There's something about the delay between making a mistake in Civ and when it finally bites you in the ass. But it's really nice when you can get into the role/feel of a civilization you're playing as - historical accuracy aside.

Have any of you played much multi-player? I've probably started 12 or more games on hybrid (almost simultaneous) mode with groups of friends but we never seem to get past reaching the industrial era before someone needs to do weak human stuff like sleep, eat or go to work. Inevitably the next day someone isn't on and so we start yet another game...

While the start of the game is the most important for the direction of a civ, I think we're missing out on all the fun stuff that happens at the end of the game. The voting systems and so on sound like they're out of a party board-game and might be entertaining.

I'm also playing a game using Giant Multiplayer Robot (A hot seat game you play via auto-transferred saves) with friends with busier lives but at the rate of just under a turn a day it's going to be a year before we get to the endgame...

[BaneTheBrawler]

I've done a bit of co-op. Usually we start a game, one of us gets fucked over, restart. we haven't finished a game yet. Guy got in an accident and broke his back, though, so once he gets his computer set up in his room we should have plenty of time to play.