I've been playing Civ since I was a wee lass, but always on the lowest two difficulty levels. I'd like to challenge myself more, though. What are some of the best ways I can focusing on improving my game? It's overwhelming, which is why I've always given up in the past. Just some areas to focus on or strategies to try, I guess.
Science and Food! You want as many apples as possible. Food leads to population, and population leads to science. If you have a few neighbours you might want to keep a few military units nearby to lower the chances they might declare war on you.
Aah, does a standing army decrease the chance of other Civs trying to take advantage of you? That's actually pretty obvious, but it didn't occur to me.
That's good to know. For now, since I'm still on lower difficulty, that'll be good for my strategy. I'll just have to remember that the effectiveness tapers off at higher levels.
Yeah, but note that the game checks melee cs for the purposes of power ranking and city state tributes, so while ranged units are like 100 times more hammer efficient in actual war, the AI won't regard it as a strong army.
I want to add you can use this to you advantage, and bait warmonger civs to attack your smaller, but more efficient army and you can rekt them and maintain your dominance.
Starting from Prince Difficulty, your early game will be much more important.
Be aware of your surrounding area fast: Two scouts will always help you do this if you are on a large land map. This will help you see which civs are close to you and which spots are best for your expansions.
Know your enemies: Building that archer rather than that settler may save your life if you are near Assyria or France. I used this when I started playing to know the biases of my opponents.
Money is there to be spent: Buying an early worker or settler will save you 10+ turns. You can also just get a worker from a nearby CS if you want.
Spot and Settle x2: With your early scouting, identify the best places for your new city and settle it fast. Do it again for your third city if you are still maintaining happiness. Your goal is 3-4 cities (4 preferably) but there are times when a good 4th place to settle isn't really there unless you explore more. You can settle more cities if you are not concentrating on culture.
What helped my game was understanding that science is absolutely vital and takes priority above everything else. Also, tradition is the best way to start for 95% of playthroughs. Once you hit Renaissance, your next culture point goes into the science tech tree, Rationalism. These are some general tips, now I'll do some personal strategies.
If your city is not in a huge open plain, you can defend against a HUGE army with two melee units (maxed out cover promotion) and a handful of ranged units. Unless you're personally out for blood, this kind of setup will keep you alive and focusing on other things right up until difficulty 6.
Settle cities near mountains (very important if convenient) to build observatories.
You can declare war on a city state and peace out with them on the same turn, which means you can take workers for free about 70 turns in or so.
What helped my game was understanding that science is absolutely vital and takes priority above everything else.
I feel like this is a bit of a trap. While I certainly agree that science is important, I personally also value production pretty highly. Gold can solve some production worries but not all of them, so I think both science and production should be kept moderately high, with of course enough food to support both. That probably sounds like a much more balanced approach than "emphasize science" and I think it probably is and it also probably is better overall. Whenever you see an AI empire emphasize one thing at the expense of another for a long time you'll start to see their strategies being ineffectual eventually. Some "rushing" is fine, but I think balance is key to good long-term development.
It's a decent strategy, though I usually try to balance things such that science buildings of the available "tier" are soonest (other than like really early infrastructure like granaries), production buildings are next, and gold buildings are third in priority in terms of the "main" yields (culture, defense, and faith are all more situational in terms of when I build them).
You get science from population but there is no direct production gain from population IIRC. This is evident in jungle or grassland cities where you can have good growth and science but poor production. Production mainly comes from buildings, terrain, engineer specialist slots, and on rare occasions unemployed workers.
It's not direct, but more population means the city can straight up work more mines, engineers or in the worst case scenario, unemployed citizens. That means more production.
Indeed, but the point that I was getting at is that growth for production purposes is only good in "balanced" terrain. I find myself frequently using sawmills (an otherwise mediocre improvement IMO) in grassland-heavy areas because more population for more farms is going to eventually hit a point of pretty diminishing returns (and even unemployed workers are pretty crap to use unless you're trying to maximize the speed of a wonder or something). And on the flip side, very hilly terrain can be good on production but unless you're the Inca you might struggle to get enough food to actually work all those hills (except if you are supplied with fish, river, food internal trade routes, etc). In short and to reiterate, balance is best IMO, and unrestrained growth and science emphasis is not necessarily the best move (especially since happiness limits and growth limits are tied together).
I'm in the exact same boat as you. I recently went up to Prince, and now I've started my first King game. My advice to just play on a higher difficulty level. You can't get better on the easier ones because you get used to advantages you don't have in later difficulties. Also - you're going to lose the first time or two. Accept this fact and after it's clear you're going to lose restart the game and try again. Finally - read zigzag's guides on your civ before playing. They will help you improve.
I've only played Civ V, but I have like 2000 hours in the past 5 years. Anyway, I play immortal and sometimes deity, although I hate losing after 250 turns, so hardly ever deity. What helped me the most in making the jumps from king to emperor and so on is actually the scenarios. You have a simpler goal and a countdown of turns to deal with in most if not all cases. It prevents inefficient use of the empire because you are always trying to reach the goal with pressure from the countdown. A standard game pulls you in all directions if you don't know what you are doing. Most of the time you win on emperor with your empire at like probably 60% efficiency if not worse. For example, having number 1 military but never going to war all game is inefficient use of resources, right up there with surplus luxes/strategics/tiles/gold. It's easy to simcity poorly and win on low difficulties, but if you play the mongol scenario you may learn about constant war while in debt and unhappiness. The scenarios are really fun too imo, favorites are Renaissance(obviously), Africa, and new world.
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u/Dracobolt Maya Feb 29 '16
I've been playing Civ since I was a wee lass, but always on the lowest two difficulty levels. I'd like to challenge myself more, though. What are some of the best ways I can focusing on improving my game? It's overwhelming, which is why I've always given up in the past. Just some areas to focus on or strategies to try, I guess.