Sid Meier's Civilization Series

I figured we needed this thread.

Um, I bought the Polynesia and Denmark packs for Civ V today.

My second favourite series, with Super Mario Bros at the top. I enjoy controlling a empire from its humble beginings at the start of history to the launching of the star ship to Alpha Centauri, which shares the position as my favourite Civilizations along with Civ 4 BTS, though I do realy enjoy Civ 5.

The series also provides quotes into thy head too

I used to play Civ II excessively. A couple months ago I finally picked up Civ IV, and after the initial shock of the upgraded graphics I really like it. Yesterday I finally got a decent win on Noble difficulty. I played as Abraham Lincoln (FDR's stats), and was rated, appropriately, Abraham Lincoln.

Does anyone have particular tricks or favorite strategies? In Civ II I abused the diplomacy with the Great Wall and UN wonders, then used clever tech paths and Leonardo's Workshop to get huge armies of Dragoons at Horsemen prices.

Is Beyond The Sword worth getting for Civ IV? I already have Warlords.

edited 10th Sep '11 7:51:52 AM by EdwardsGrizzly

Yes, it definitely is. Beyond the Sword improves the base gameplay a lot, instead of just adding scenarios you play once and then forget completely.

How do the Corporations work? One concern I've had is that they might detract from the realistic feel of the game.

^^^ In II and Civ Net I tended to use a "small but technologically superpowerful nation that won conflict on superior tech and tactics" approach.

Then III came along and made that sort of thing impossible with the relatively broken culture-border cycle, which pretty much forced extremely expansionist gameplay if you wanted to persist, as if you were even a little bit behind your neighbors in anything you would lose land and power like it was made of air, and once you lost land you lost productivity and more importantly culture and technology output, plus you lost the capability to get it back, basically meaning once you fell behind you were caught in a cycle that always resulted in a loss. One of the many reasons I don't like that game.

IV, on the other hand, is my favorite Civ game - mostly because it fixed the border mechanics, making them less crippling and more natural, which is good: I liked the concept of the border mechanics but hated the way they were implemented in III (honestly, I think the only thing I liked about that game was the music).

Still, ever since then I've adopted a fusion of both expansionist and isolationist/research/self improvement gameplay, which works out pretty well for me. That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I guess.

edited 10th Sep '11 1:37:42 PM by KnownUnknown

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Realism.

Seriously, don't bother with "realism". It's a video game.

How do people feel about V and its octagon based grid?

Hexagon, right? I haven't played V, but from what I hear it is a great game, just not Civ.

I agree that the Culture mechanic in Civ IV vastly improves the game.

edited 10th Sep '11 2:52:26 PM by EdwardsGrizzly

Speaking of 2, should I get the gold complete version or Test of Time?

I really liked Test Of Time, though to be honest that was because I really liked the Fantasy Civ game that came with it.

x4: I can't judge as a fan of the franchise, but the fact that I've clocked 40 hours of Civ V in two months says something.

I'm new to the Civ series, grabbed Civ IV a month ago. I find it hard to get into, so much information to pay attention to. Hell, I'm having trouble getting my cities not to starve.

The theme is awesome though.

^ Build a worker for each city and put them on autopilot unless you want to do something specific (like cut down a forest or build a road). They should take care of sustenance and production issues, unless your city has a relatively bad spot.

Make sure you put them on Improve Nearest City, and not on Make Improvements until your Empire either gets sizable or the city you're improving is - at the moment, adequate.

edited 11th Sep '11 1:22:31 PM by KnownUnknown

I'm trying to pull off a Culture victory. Tips?

Also, did any of you guys play that Facebook game, Civ World?

I have spent much time watching Civ 4 videos by TheMeInTeam. He's pretty informative and entertaining; I've learnt quite a bit about playing Civ 4 from him. He doesn't do much Civ 5 though; says he's waiting till the get some more patches out or something like that....

I've played Civ World. It's a really good game, but in my opinion it kind of lacks replay value. Because of the way it's designed it feels like the exact same thing every time even during the same game, and there isn't much in the way of necessary innovation. Depending on what's going on you could pick a city config, leave the game alone for days, and be perfectly fine.

Also, depending on who you're playing against, it's kind of easy. Hilariously, my Civilization of only three people was persistently the most powerful Civ in the game (against Civs with over twenty or thirty people working for them or much more), merely by actually knowing what we were doing when it came to military.

Getting attacked by someone who thinks they've got an easy picking on the weaklings, only to lose and have all their tech and wonders become the property of the very weaklings they sought to grief. Glorious. Taking that headway and using it to become one of the biggest fish in the pond, while the ones who propelled you there languished as second best? Priceless. At one point a long ways later we even deigned to put a small part of our army to help them repel an invasion... just so we could take what the opponents were trying to take later. Muhuhuhaha.

Anyway, for cultural victories... I've never really gotten one (I prefer Diplomatic and Space victories myself, with the occasional Conquest), but I'd say try to get Great People and Wonders like they were going out of style - go for techs that the computer won't dive for first and out of the way but still beneficial wonders for what you're trying to do. Found Buddhism and use your first Great Prophet to make their Religious Wonder. That sort of thing.

edited 11th Sep '11 9:53:37 PM by KnownUnknown

started playing Civ 5 as Oda Nobunaga. Did well, reached the Middle ages by getting a free upgrade and getting Compass before anyone else. Unfortunately, after attacking a city state, 3 countries declared war on me simultaneously. :/

Yeah, just a rule of thumb, make sure that the city-state you're attacking had no allies before attacking it.

Didn't stop me from conquering Vienna and the last few cities of the Roman empire in my first full playthrough, though.

edited 12th Sep '11 4:44:34 AM by BaronofBarons

It didn't have any allies! D:

They were all "I Denounce you!" And I was all "Ok, i understand, I apologize." and then my neighbors started invading me. :/

Do not automate your workers, you know what each city needs better then the (bad) worker AI does.

And as for cultural victory, in addition to what Known Unknown said, try to get as many religions in your cites as possible, as this will allow you to build more temples, which allow you to build cathedrals, which increase the city they're built in's culture growth by 50%.

I went for cultural victories in my first few games of Civ IV, without success. My Victories have all been space race ones (though there was that one heartbreaking game where I was one vote short of a diplomatic win the turn before the AI launched its spaceship).

That said, my "so close" experiences have taught me the following:

1: Choose your three Legendary cities early. One of them will be your capital, and the other two should have both plenty of food to support a large population, and several good production tiles like hills or Iron. Best-case scenario is a river with flood plains and several resources like copper or stone.

2: Focus your early research on founding as many religions as possible. The AI will usually beat you to Buddhism, so you path should go Hinduism, Judaism, Confucianism, Oracle for Christianity or Taoism, research the other, and take Islam as your free tech for Liberalism. Ideally, your Legendary cities will each be the Holy City for one or two religions.

3: Build cottages, and lots of them. You need to crank out research early in the game, as well as produce enough gold that you can afford to raise the culture slider later on.

4: Get Marble and Stone, and build all the wonders that they accelerate in your Legendary cities. Wonders produce lots of culture, and many of the marble and stone based wonders also have nice religion-based bonuses.

5: Spread every religion to each of your cities. Organized Religion makes this easier. Build temples and monasteries as early as you can, since their culture output doubles after 1000 years. Save cathedrals for later, and focus on building them in the two cities that aren't your capital. The capital will usually be doing fine without help.

6: In the late game, beat the AI to Electricity, Radio, Mass Media, and the cultural wonders that come with them. Then put the culture slider on 100% and rush for the finish.

here's a good, fairly informative video of a culture win by TheMeInTeam

edited 12th Sep '11 12:30:29 PM by Blissey1

Usually in Civ 4, I try domination by cultural expansion. On my last playthrough I absorbed 4-5 cities from various civs this way before the Spanish attacked me (I was only playing Chieftain, though).

In Civ 2, I always went along the space conquest route.