If any of you are on Civfanatics could you do me a huge favor? I keep trying to reset my password and I never get a password reset e-mail. Could you contact an admin there to see what is wrong on my behalf? My ID is the same as here “jpinard” and I’d like to post several repeatable bugs that I haven’t seen posted there.
Would be much appreciated.
I sent a PM to Thunderfall on your behalf.
Thanks Greybriar!
BTW - Do you know of a mod that lets you use more than 22 AI’s in a game? (I want to do 26 full AI with no city-states)
You’re welcome, jpinard. Sorry but I don’t know of a mod that lets you use more than 22 AI’s in a game. I only use a few mods and none of them do anything like that. If you can’t find one at Civ Fanatics, the Steam Workshop might have one. Good luck!
Yeah, I believe it’s hard-coded. Most likely because of memory management.
rezaf
6306
So, out of a whim I picked up the addon a while ago (had some local store credit to burn).
I found it doesn’t change the game in a significant way, but (possibly together with changes patched in along the way) makes it at least a little better even for someone who rather disliked the original game.
Anyhow, I ran into a problem … I appearently forgot how to play Civ.
In my first game, to refamiliarize myself with the game, I started on Warlord.
Somehow, germany launched way, WAY ahead of me scientifically pretty early on, and I never managed to catch up.
I called it a day when Germany and the second biggest player (Persia, iirc) dowed me, both bringing carpets of doom with units two tech levels ahead of me to the field.
In my second serious game I was playing England, and this time around I was dominating from early on and had no real issue winning a science victory - I could probably have won a domination one much earlier, but like I wrote, I wanted to see whatever new stuff there was to see.
By now, I felt confident enough to move up to Prince.
Turns out, I’m really struggling now.
My main issue is happiness. Whenever one of those “people that like to smile the most” polls comes around, I end up way, WAY at the bottom.
Wtf do you have to do to keep the guys at least content? As soon as I even start thinking about expanding, my happiness approaches zero.
Any more than one additional city, and it’s negative, or at least borderline.
God forbid my cities actually grow to a decent size, eventually.
I only settle where I can gain access to an additional luxury resource, I try to get doubles to trade for new luxury resources, I try to build happiness buildings when I can, I try to pick appropriate social policies, I do everything I can think of, but the AI expands like crazy and still comes out at like 25 happiness with a dozen cities when I can hardly entertain three or maybe four just limping in the low single-digit positives.
So you pros, please give me a hand, where’s the obvious game mechanic I’m forgetting here? What do you need to do to pull this off?
Thank you so much in advance.
rezaf
Regarding in AI and modding, does anyone know if it possible, or if it has been done for this Civ or previous, to develop a AI server that would connect to our game via network, that way you could have a PC on your LAN or even provided by someone on the internet that would run the AI as a separate program , this would help with resource problems and if there was an API it would a make good experiment for AI students out there.
The thing is 3-4 cities is totally enough to be a super power in this version of civ. For example social policies are much cheaper for civs with less cities, so you can get ahead there.
You don’t need to hyper-expand like you kinda had to in earlier civs
robc04
6309
You can’t just expand totally unchecked. Sometimes I have to wait until I get the tech for the next happiness building before I expand. Trade happiness resources with the AI. When you are planning to expand, factor in the growth of your current cities. Puppet cities that you conquer from your enemies until you have the money to buy a courthouse for it.
I’m not a super good player or anything - I play at King, but I usually don’t find happiness too difficult. The AI gets big happiness bonuses, so don’t expect to keep up in the earlier part of the game happiness-wise. Once you get rolling you get get your happiness score up there. With the expansion it is even easier to stay happy if you found a religion and pick happiness producing perks.
Happiness wrangling is a big part of the early game. The best way to get happiness is to secure a luxury resource (each unique LR gives you +4 happiness!), so expanding into areas with LRs, and finding other civilizations and trading with them is a good idea. Forming an alliance with a city-state also gets you their luxury items (click the city and it will tell you which ones they have).
If you find yourself consistently bumping up against the happiness limit, you can also choose social policies and and religion traits that boost happiness. The honor policy that grants +1 happiness for garrisoned units is a good one, for example.
Certain wonders also help, of course.
But as others have said, if you can get a solid 4-5 established in the early game, you’re doing fine.
Also! Don’t fret if you’re at the bottom of the happiness lists, the AI is cheating.
Alan_Au
6311
Yes, the AI cheats when it comes to happiness.
My rule is to only found a city when it gets me a new resource. I typically end up with 3-5 cities, which is plenty.
rezaf
6312
Like I wrote, I already only found cities when they’ll secure me at least one additional luxury resource, build happiness buildings whenever they become available (i.e., basically only the Colloseum early on, with the occasional Circus) and trade with the AI whenever I find one which has excess luxuries. Which most don’t, they usually have only a single of one or two resources until fairly late in the game.
I try to befriend to citystates also, but since I already priorize happiness, I’m struggling with money as well. I’m usually in the positive, but just barely.
Spending $250 (or more) to befriend a citystate is out of the question, most of the time.
Maintaining four or five cities in, say 1500 is attainable, but by that point, some AIs are closing in on twenty cities, and I’m having a hard time keeping up. They field gargantuan armies, steal all wonders I’m attempting and I can just BARELY keep ahead in science.
About cheating, I though Prince was the last level where the AI does not cheat or only cheats a little?
I remember early on in Civ5’s life, the AI tended to just ignore unhappiness and get away with it, but now, they just seem to be terribly happy - somehow.
Thanks for tips anyway, everone - I appreciate the effort.
rezaf
Regarding money issues:
- Try to build cities near or along rivers for extra gold.
- Trade excess resources for money early on to soak up the inevitable economy crash.
- Get the tech to build markets and then later trading posts as soon as you can.
- Build markets and trading posts along rivers and grassland areas.
There are social and religious policies you can take as well for extra gold output (commerce is especially good), but I find once I get over that initial economical hump before building markets and trading posts, I always have a surplus.
rezaf
6314
Heh, thanks Nephrinn, but how can I focus on building cities near rivers when I’m already trying to focus on building near new luxury resources, wherever they may be?
How can I trade my excess resources away for money when I’m trying to trade them away for more luxury resources instead?
How can I focus on building Markets and later Banks when I’m already focusing on building happiness buildings?
And how can I focus social and religious policies on gold when I’m already focusing on happiness enhancing stuff?
I’m sure you get the point… ;-)
I DO know how the basic stuff in Civ5 works, I just find myself struggling with juggling everything at the same time. Worked fine (on prince, at least) back in vanilla, no idea why.
rezaf
One thing about the game is that the map script should (on most style maps) provide you with a large amount of one particular luxury resource scattered around your captial, then another different random one (one copy) in your capital radiius, then another different one (one copy) someone in the five to eight hex vicinity of your captial. A very common play is to expand second onto that third resource while getting in additional copies of your “monopoly” luxury to trade.
Are you meeting enough Civs to have four or five trading partners to export your excess monopoly luxury for either cash or other luxuries? Meeting people early is a big deal, it means that you can convert all those extra luxuries into money, which can then be converted into hammers via rush buy. Being able to sell one of your four surplus monopoly resources for 240g and almost buy a worker straight up is a huge deal.
Scouting is also huge because you can find natural wonders. Four of those is the equivalent of a free luxury resource. So get those scouts out and see the world early on, before borders make getting around a real pain. You can also meet city states, and the new quest system means that you can often hit ally with a few for a period of time sometimes without too much effort (and this is worthwhile, as their happiness boosts can be huge now in G&K).
Finally, you might want to look at your tile improvements and tile assignments if you are constantly having too much to build and hitting happiness issues. There’s a reasonable chance that you are food heavy and hammer light. Hammers have always been king in Civ, and this Civ is no different. You can’t expect to get anywhere with four food+nothing else tiles without working at least some lumber mills or mines so you can actually produce stuff.
If you dropbox up a save file somewhere I’d be happy to take a look and provide comments ( Immortal/Deity level player here ).
Sometimes you get stuck in an area with no rivers or suitable location with rivers + viable resources and when that happens you’ve got to make tough decisions. These might include going to war or exploring for better land (particularly overseas). However it isn’t the end of the world without rivers. You just need to pursue a more economic based strategy with trading posts everywhere and high priorities on money-making resources, policies, buildings, wonders, great people, and so on.
How can I trade my excess resources away for money when I’m trying to trade them away for more luxury resources instead?
More often than not you won’t be able to trade an excess resource for another resource, so always trade it away for money ASAP to reap the rewards then and now and perhaps invest that money elsewhere into areas like city-states or buying buildings. Don’t forget about strategic resources as well. If you have a lot of iron or horses early game, trade some of them away and make big money.
How can I focus on building Markets and later Banks when I’m already focusing on building happiness buildings?
You can do both. You get coliseums before markets. In fact, you should be prioritizing building workshops ASAP to build buildings faster. You also can’t build factories without workshops, so they are an absolutely necessary building in almost all your cities.
And how can I focus social and religious policies on gold when I’m already focusing on happiness enhancing stuff?
Well, the early policy tress have a mixture of happiness and/or economical stuff, so you can likely fill one of those out before you get access to the commerce tree. As for religion, you just have to decide which of the two you need most or you think you will need the most based on various things like starting position. Remember that you can enhance your religion 3 times, so you can adjust later on if necessary.
Hope that helps.
Just wanted to emphasize this. Don’t underestimate how valuable exploring can be, especially if you’re aggressive with it. Spain is one of my favorite civs because of the HUGE gold bonuses you get for being the first to explore natural wonders. Always try to get a city in the radius of a nearby natural wonder if at all possible too. Can be a big boon early on.
routlaw
6318
Playing through the first 130 or so turns w/ Cathy on Immortal last night ( buy new Steam games-> play more Civ) . Game is going great and I’m pretty sure it’s in the bag-just going to start steamrolling things.
Making the effort to get two or even three city-states to really like you early on and staying allied with them really pays off. It really fixes a lot of the early happiness issues you might run into w/ a luxury-starved start (which I had) and generally smooths out issues in the early game. Here are some nice tips:
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explore, explore, explore. You have to meet City states to get quests for them. It is harder to get Allied status with far away city states early on (harder to finish barb quests in particular), but sometimes you will out of the blue complete some quests and get a friend or brief ally status , giving you a good 20-30 turn boost.
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aggressively hunt down barb camps that are marked as quests for neighboring city states. You get a ton of influence and those barbs need killing anyway. It is often worth leaving a more remote encampment near a CS alone until they flag it w/ a quest just to get the influence bonus. A camp can be pretty easily cleared with an archer and a spearman or even an archer/warrior, though that gets a bit more tense. Composite archers can often solo them w/ a warrior, and composite archers upgraded from early archers are so good for beating early rushes that may be the way to go. Point is-use your army instead of letting it sit in their garrisons.
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If you meet a civ but don’t know their borders yet, don’t establish an embassy until you get a city-state request to “Discover X civilization” . Then you can set up an embassy and easily finish the quest.
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If you found a religion (highly recommended on Immortal and below for most starts), then the spread religion quest is very easy to do. Just an aside- I have found in the games where I get Ceremonial Burial (+1 happiness to each city that follows you religion) to be a very powerful founder bonus when coupled with one of the religious spread enhancer beliefs, which the AIs never seem to aggresively take despite being crazy powerful.
In my current game (turn 130 or so) I have three city-states around 130/60 and most of that effort has been from focusing on completing quests as much as possible. Some cash was involved, but it was all from excess luxury/strategic resource sales.
Miramon
6319
I just love pointing out Civ V AI failures for some reason…
So I’m playing a pangaea game, and Greece is about 50 hexes away from me, with city states in the way, and various other civilizations closer to both me and Greece. But they decide they hate me for some random reason, and over the course of the game they feed my empire with their pathetic surrender terms that they offer after their sad little invasion forces are destroyed.
1000 AD. The awesome Greek strike force consisting of 2 pikemen, 2 catapults and 2 archers is destroyed by a couple of crossbowmen and a musketeer. In our newspaper, we call it a “police action” against brigands. Surely that couldn’t have been an actual war. They offer terms of all their luxuries, all their gold, and 17 gold a turn. Sure, why not.
1040 AD. “The Greeks have stolen Masonry from you!”
Seriously, Civ V? It’s 1040 AD, Greece is the third ranked civilization in the world, and they have just stolen Masonry? That must have been quite the impossible mission. Drakaina the seductive Greek spy stops at any one of a hundred construction sites around town and somehow convinces a random construction worker to divulge the Great Secret of Straw Mixed With Mud. Well, have a party, if that’s really all you wanted. Of course you could have stopped in one of our many free public libraries and learned something really advanced, like Iron Working…
I’m not sure why, but this struck me as insanely funny. My fiancée is looking at me strangely. I don’t think that she, as a non-player, has the same sense of the humour behind it as I do. Thanks for the laugh!
