[Guesong]

Didn't you mention earlier in the the thread that the game was never really stable for you, even pre-expansion? I wonder if its related with your hardware setup, as I never had a lot of crashes.

Well, I actually solved the mystery today despite all my bitching. Another thread sparked the idea.

Turns out Civ wasn't digesting the fact that my name had an accent in it, so when it tried to load up a save (that are always under C: Documents and Settings / NAME / Sid Meier....), it always crashed because my name has a É in it. So when he used that file path to load up what it needed...no go.

Changed it, works flawlessly now, and after one year of troubles, I can finally play Civ and resume games!

Can't believe it was so stupid all along.

[Danj]

My copy of Gods and Kings arrived at work today (several days later than expected), fortunately I'd left Steam running at home so I remoted in and entered the key and it's now installed ready for me to try when I get home :)

[colinp]

If I haven't picked up Civ 5 yet is it worth picking up both it and the expansion right away?

[Danj]

If I haven't picked up Civ 5 yet is it worth picking up both it and the expansion right away?

There'll probably be a deal on Civ 5 base game at least in the Steam Sale (expected Thursday) so I'd wait a couple days. It's Steamworks, so wherever you buy it from you can activate on Steam.

[Artanisix]

Are there any good beginner guides to Civ 5? Complete newbie to the game and the series. It's a lot of fun, but I'm very bad at it and am falling behind against level 2 AI right now.

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Is there a reason why Steam is prompting me to download an almost 5GB update? I didn't buy the expansion (yet.)

[balddemon]

Are there any good beginner guides to Civ 5? Complete newbie to the game and the series. It's a lot of fun, but I'm very bad at it and am falling behind against level 2 AI right now.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5
War Academy
check civfanatics, but dont read the forums unless it's a guide. i'm pretty sure its only ppl bitching about how easy this game is

[Meteorain]

Are there any good beginner guides to Civ 5? Complete newbie to the game and the series. It's a lot of fun, but I'm very bad at it and am falling behind against level 2 AI right now.

You should play with the rest of us Mumble-GAF civvers. We taught Freakinchair how not to kill himself and generally do quite well teaching each other random things.

[Proc]

Had my first daylight break moment with civ 5 since launch. Long time coming but it happened. My military juggernaut force would not let me sleep. *sees sun, alt tabs, checks clock, saves and runs to bed*.

There is enough game here even without gods and kings but I might give firaxis more money to support more games like this.

[Wazzim]

I played some scenario today and experienced a negative monetary income stream for the first time ever lol.

Also wanted to note that the expansion is really nice!

[Realyn]

wrong thread, i guess.

[EagleTwin]

New to the Civ franchise...should I play Civ 5+dlc or Gods&Kings first?

[Pikelet]

Just go straight to Gods and Kings, the DLC only adds a few new civilisations whereas the expansion has that plus a crapload more.

[A Human Becoming]

After playing Civ IV the past weeks I finally tried Civ V. The game looks gorgeous but I can already tell there are some changes I don't care for. Being able to buy land no one owns is strange for one thing. Cultural expansion makes a lot more sense to me. I did find it difficult to expand at times in Civ IV without settling a new city, so I guess buying land would alleviate that problem. I just don't think it fits the game; it should only allow land purchases from other nations/city-states.

[Flying_Phoenix]

Agreed. It's what I miss most from the old civ games. It's hard to communicate with the AI and figure out their intentions.

What's more shocking is that the A.I. has been notciably improved in this expansion. At least to me anyway.

[Ville Pukema]

How are the online matches hosted? P2P or host does everything, also if player leaves computer replaces him or hes civilization just disapears?

[TruthJunky]

I may be an idiot, but I cannot find the answer here or elsewhere:

Which previously released DLC is included in the "Gods and Kings" expansion? Which is not? I'm planning to get G&K during the summer sale, and I'm trying to figure out which pre-existing DLC I'll still have to buy separately.

[Fragamemnon]

Pretty sure the Explorer Map Pack and the Ancient Wonders aren't included w/ G&K. I really recommend the Explorer Map Pack, the Continents Plus map script is the best in the game.

Anyone else heavily favoring Tradition openers? The free Liberty settler comes so late and it's easy enough w/ Tradition and early luxury trading to just buy your settlers. All the free buildings and free food is just so much more free hammers, and the free GP in Liberty isn't nearly as powerful as it was in vanilla. I did a game with Cathy-a classic Liberty fast expander style gameplay-and felt that Tradition would have been almost as strong in the short term and much more powerful long term.

Honor openings are still super narrow and require flawless execution on Immortal/Deity, and I generally don't like them outside for, say, Germany. Better w/ Frontier map script or raging barbs, I suppose.

[ZZMitch]

Is there anyway to add all the map types to the main map list? It is annoying having to go to the advanced settings to check out all the different map types.

[MasLegio]

so how do I make mods actually work in the games???

I have subscribed and activated them ingame (clicked next, something happens in the background, then back) but I cannot see any difference in game

[Zzoram]

After playing Civ IV the past weeks I finally tried Civ V. The game looks gorgeous but I can already tell there are some changes I don't care for. Being able to buy land no one owns is strange for one thing. Cultural expansion makes a lot more sense to me. I did find it difficult to expand at times in Civ IV without settling a new city, so I guess buying land would alleviate that problem. I just don't think it fits the game; it should only allow land purchases from other nations/city-states.

They just don't want as many of the Civ IV-type cities that exist only to claim land and produce nothing.

[Fragamemnon]

I played a Siam game (Diplo win, Immortal on Continents Plus) last night and got a starting capital with basically all desert with some floodplain...but with an oasis surrounded by hills (for the juicy 2hammers/2 food tiles w/ Civil Service).

I was able to get Petra in the city , which is literally unreal in a capital city with any significant amount of desert around. City got to size 38 by the end of the game (turn 260) and at no point could it not produce any world wonder in until 8 turns after Petra was built.

I also had the Desert Faith bonus and just went freedom and bought a bunch of Great Artists with the extra faith per turn. I literally spent 50% of the game in a Golden Age.

The other civs were not doing poorly, but the game was a total blowout. Celts had way more cities than I did, but I never needed more than the initial four off of Tradition to win. I find that's generally the case w/ Tradition starts-even if the site is super-amazing, as long as you have enough food to vertically grow to infinity the extra cities just drag you down. If you need to war, make puppets instead. The faster policy changes and faster national wonders more than make up for the loss of a (much weaker) production queue.

Edit: I hate watching the turn 100-110 Montezuma breakup in action. It never fails on high levels, he rushes someone, fails, then spams some crap cities, then they all get eaten. I hate having him as one of the AIs in my games, it always leads to a runaway AI as a result.

[agm2502]

So i've played this game for over 80 hours without issue, ever since then the game crashes randomly, and one of my saves wont load, it just gets stuck on the game loading screen. I'm not really a PC gamer and this is my first real foray into it. Is this a known issue? I bought it on Steam, will re-installing it cause me to lose all the saves/data?

[Fragamemnon]

Your saved games are stored in a folder outside of the Civ5 game data folder (in My Games/Civilization V, I believe). Before you reinstall you might want to go to that directory and delete the cache folder and restart Civ5 to see if there was some corruption there that is cleared up.

Anyone else loving G&K the more you play it? Subtle stuff like city state quests and barbarians actually has a huge impact on higher level play, as the AIs use their initial extra units not to rush your only city on turn 30 but instead farm barbs for CS influence. Diplomacy still isn't opaque or quantitative enough and lacks enough mouseover options, but you can cobble what pushes the AI's buttons a lot easier than the old sylandro probe style AI behavior.

Religion and espionage work great. My only concern at this point is that land wars are still virtually impossible wincons on Immortal/Deity, the AI production bonuses scale insanely into the endgame and you can simply not clear out units fast enough. Pre G&K fast stealth bombers that could one-shot enemy units were the way to actually do this, and now it's just not possible. So you're left with one of the alternate wincons or getting far ahead enough w/ Navy to win.

[neoemonk]

How much micromanagement of cities do people do? I'm just getting into the game and I typically just use the citizen management interface but I'm wondering if that's really sufficient. Starting out on Prince difficulty as well.

[Fragamemnon]

How much micromanagement of cities do people do? I'm just getting into the game and I typically just use the citizen management interface but I'm wondering if that's really sufficient. Starting out on Prince difficulty as well.

I micro everything up to about size 20, and from there I let the governor do the person placement. Specialist slots are always manually controlled.

My preferred (and the general high-level consensus) is that the best all-purpose way to micro your citizen placement is to set the city on production focus and then lock down the food tiles you want worked up until you hit a food per turn/growth rate that is agreeable with your city size/tech/specific plans.

---

My current game : Persia/Pangaea/Immortal Difficultly/Epic Speed

Darius is a (very cool) beast with the Golden Age changes in Gods and Kings. You get to play the game as this really weird cultural/military hybrid since you can just throw any Great Person up for a Golden Age anymore, only Great Artists. So Opera Houses, Gardens, and having the spare food to run artist specialists are actually a big deal to have in a few cities. The Lourve is basically a better version of the autocracy finisher!

Constantly chaining golden ages also have other weird side effects, namely the happiness build-up to natural golden age isn't that good (since you don't progress to the next golden age while in a current golden age), so extra happiness always needs to go into eating cities or through growth, having tiles that produce at least one gold are very, very desirable so riverside farms and trading post non-rivers is way better. The side-cultural focus as a result of your artist specialists plays well into tall empires w/ puppets except for the most productive/awesome cities so you can really rocket through the social policies.

Highly recommended Civ to play if you haven't done so since G&K came out. As with all warmongering Civs, playing on Epic is generally recommended if you can stomach it, midgame and endgame warring on regular speed at high difficulties is completely unfun (not necesssarily harder, but much less fun).

[MasLegio]

Has anyone gotten mods to work?

neither one I have installed and selected works

[Babalu.]

got this at the steam sale. omg my life....this is so addicting.

i feel like im kind of lost though. i'm just kind of making units/buildings, researching, and then moving my available units to wherever. not really doing anything fancy. i have my workers to auto because i'm not sure what they should be doing.

can anyone help me ? i took over a city-state (singapore) and made it a puppet state but should i have annexed it? what is the difference? people said to just raze it and build my own city but it wont let me, it says something like cannot raze a city that was a capital or something like that. what is that?

[Trigger]

You can't raze capitals and city-states. You can only annex them. I prefer to make them puppet states, and then I annex them once they unlock most of the available buildings.

Has anyone gotten mods to work? neither one I have installed and selected works

What mod are you using? It might be a problem with that mod specifically. I selected two religions mods, and they work fine.

[Trancos]

got this at the steam sale. omg my life....this is so addicting. i feel like im kind of lost though. i'm just kind of making units/buildings, researching, and then moving my available units to wherever. not really doing anything fancy. i have my workers to auto because i'm not sure what they should be doing. can anyone help me ? i took over a city-state (singapore) and made it a puppet state but should i have annexed it? what is the difference? people said to just raze it and build my own city but it wont let me, it says something like cannot raze a city that was a capital or something like that. what is that?

You cannot control what puppet cities build or focus on, but on the other hand they do not bring as much unhappiness as annexed cities. In a really simplified way is a happiness/production dilemma.

You also cannot raze former capitald, this is to avoid an early/easy end to the the game where other players cannot conquer back their capital. This means that for a military victory you need to conquer each capital and HOLD THEM while you conquer the other ones. On the same topic you can "liberate" occupied capitals from others players and give them back to their rightful owners.

[Fragamemnon]

can anyone help me ? i took over a city-state (singapore) and made it a puppet state but should i have annexed it? what is the difference? people said to just raze it and build my own city but it wont let me, it says something like cannot raze a city that was a capital or something like that. what is that?

Just as a future reference, you should not be capturing city-states as a rule. They might go to war with you as part of a larger conflict w/ another major Civ, but their units will not wander far from their borders and are generally not a threat. The consequences of conquering a city state are very dire-you will find it nearly impossible to work with other city states and having city-state allies is crucial in this game.

You can't raze city states or captial cities.

[Boss Doggie]

Wiping out another Civ in itself a negative impact on everyone else. If you've already killed one Civ, you might as well kill the rest.

[Babalu.]

Wiping out another Civ in itself a negative impact on everyone else. If you've already killed one Civ, you might as well kill the rest.

wait so how are you suppose to win the game? I'm at like turn 150 on my first game and after i took out singapore, ghandi and pretty much everyone denounced me. They said i was warmongering. i'm now allies with spain and i declared war on nebuchanezzar because he was the first to denounce me which kind of set the trend and I took out one of his cities and then he offered peace for 10 turns. after 10 turns he denounced me again but thats it.


other then that nothing has really happened in the game at all. And i only took out singapore because some other city-state asked me to.

Every turn is just like moving a couple guys around or killing a barbarian and thats it. Is there more to do that i'm missing? This game just seems pretty uneventful that what I thought it was going to be at least so far.

How many turns in an average game? 500?

[Trigger]

If a game doesn't seem eventful then maybe you should move up a difficulty level? That's what I did.

[Boss Doggie]

wait so how are you suppose to win the game? I'm at like turn 150 on my first game and after i took out singapore, ghandi and pretty much everyone denounced me. They said i was warmongering. i'm now allies with spain and i declared war on nebuchanezzar because he was the first to denounce me which kind of set the trend and I took out one of his cities and then he offered peace for 10 turns. after 10 turns he denounced me again but thats it.

If you're going for domination expect everyone to hate you.

[ZZMitch]

Quick question for you guys, I have been looking through the advanced game options and was wondering what you all usually set for some of them?

Things such as the temperature etc, and resources. Has anyone tried it with random resources? How would that work?

Also how does changing the game pace from say standard to marathon effect things? Does it mean I have more time to complete goals (say if I wanted to conquer the world on a huge map for instance, would it give me more time for that).

I was also thinking about trying out a game with disabled start bias to see how that changed things.

Same thing for raging barbarians and random personalities, how do they effect things?

Sorry for the rambling posts I am just delving in to the advanced options for the first time and want to figure out the best ones for me.

[Fragamemnon]

wait so how are you suppose to win the game? I'm at like turn 150 on my first game and after i took out singapore, ghandi and pretty much everyone denounced me. They said i was warmongering. i'm now allies with spain and i declared war on nebuchanezzar because he was the first to denounce me which kind of set the trend and I took out one of his cities and then he offered peace for 10 turns. after 10 turns he denounced me again but thats it.

You only need to capture and hold capital cities to win the game via domination victory. Here is the reason people hated you:

- You captured a city-state. This is real bad.
- You eliminated another player entirely. This is also real bad. Just eat their best cities and capital and leave them with a poop six pop city.
- Ghandi probably had some friends. They denounced you for beating up on him. This has severe penalties. Ghandi also probably had enemies, which will look kindly on your agressive behavior. They should become your friends, or would become if you hadn't of chowed down on that city state.

other then that nothing has really happened in the game at all. And i only took out singapore because some other city-state asked me to. Every turn is just like moving a couple guys around or killing a barbarian and thats it. Is there more to do that i'm missing? This game just seems pretty uneventful that what I thought it was going to be at least so far. How many turns in an average game? 500?

Depends on the difficultly level. Usually AI civs win via science. These are average numbers. Runaway AIs on isolated continents at the lower end or somewhat below it, well-balanced Pangaea warmongers at the high end.

On Prince and below it's probably up near 450 to 500 before the AI drunkenly wobbles out a spaceship.
On King it's likely near 380-420.
On Emperor, likely in the mid 300s.
On Immortal , 310-350.
On Deity - 240-290.

I have had Deity games with 225-230 space wins out of the AI before , it just happens sometimes and it's almost unbeatable. That's OK though, because you shouldn't win vs. the Deity AI all the time, and most of the time it is a much more modest 270.

Still, nothing like seeing "X has completed the mahattan project" on turn 185-190. You know that's going to be a rough game that likely comes right down to Utopia Project or Hubble Telescope (on cultural/science wins are possible against that kind of runaway AI).

[Trigger]

Quick question for you guys, I have been looking through the advanced game options and was wondering what you all usually set for some of them? Things such as the temperature etc, and resources. Has anyone tried it with random resources? How would that work? Also how does changing the game pace from say standard to marathon effect things? Does it mean I have more time to complete goals (say if I wanted to conquer the world on a huge map for instance, would it give me more time for that). I was also thinking about trying out a game with disabled start bias to see how that changed things. Same thing for raging barbarians and random personalities, how do they effect things? Sorry for the rambling posts I am just delving in to the advanced options for the first time and want to figure out the best ones for me.

My understanding is that temperature affects what kind of climate your world has aka lots of deserts, plains, or marshes.

The setting changes how the pace of games. I play on the longest setting (epic I think?) and most of my games run as long as 1000 turns. It takes longer to build things and eras last longer.

My gut says that start bias places civs in areas relevant to their historical background (as Japan I started a game in the actual real world location of the country once on an Earth map).

Civs behave according to how their leaders acted in real life (Ghandi pursuing cultural victories for example. Random personalities changes their behavior and make it harder to predict their actions.

Raging barbarians is self-explanatory. They just spawn at an increased rate.

EDIT- The vets of the series can correct me if anything's wrong with my response. Noob here too.

[ZZMitch]

Okay thanks! I am just gunna set everything to random and see what happens. For now anyway!

[KePoW]

Was there a Steam sale on the G&K expansion? Or has it always been full price since release?

[Mengy]

Was there a Steam sale on the G&K expansion? Or has it always been full price since release?

It was discounted, but not by much. I think the lowest I saw it hit was like $22.99.

I would have bought it for that but I bought so many other games for much, much less, that I decided to just sit on it for now. I'll see what it drops down to for the Halloween or Christmas sale, and hopefully I'm through my backlog of games enough to feel good about spending over $20 on an expansion.

[Fragamemnon]

My understanding is that temperature affects what kind of climate your world has aka lots of deserts, plains, or marshes.

You'll get more plains and deserts on arid starts, and more jungles, rivers, and marshes in wet starts.

The setting changes how the pace of games. I play on the longest setting (epic I think?) and most of my games run as long as 1000 turns. It takes longer to build things and eras last longer.

Unintended side effect is also that the games get a lot easier on slower pacing. Epic games will last 1.6-1.8x the number of turns that a standard speed will, and Marathon is 2.5x+. I encourage people to play these alternate speeds, just to be aware that conquest wins will likely not see the late game units unless you are toying with the AI provided you are playing at your "usual" difficultly.

My gut says that start bias places civs in areas relevant to their historical background (as Japan I started a game in the actual real world location of the country once on an Earth map).

No-start biases refer to the preferred geographical starting locations some Civilizations have defined for them to help use their unique abilities. Carthage, with her free harbors, usually starts near the coast, as does England and the Ottomans (generally speaking). America has a bias for river starts. Hiawatha will start in the middle of some forests, etc. The game only matches geography in random map generation. Scenarios and custom maps can have additional starting aspects to them.

Civs behave according to how their leaders acted in real life (Ghandi pursuing cultural victories for example. Random personalities changes their behavior and make it harder to predict their actions.

Basically this. What it actually does is randomize a set of variables (40 or so) that define AI behavior. I am still pretty sure Alexander is going to be a jackass even with this setting on though. :). I'm not a fan of this setting as a rule, warmonger Civs suffer greatly with this on and they are generally already bad enough against the player as is.

I suggest standard or epic speed, Pangaea or continents map for a diverse and interesting game.

[Boss Doggie]

My understanding is that temperature affects what kind of climate your world has aka lots of deserts, plains, or marshes. The setting changes how the pace of games. I play on the longest setting (epic I think?) and most of my games run as long as 1000 turns. It takes longer to build things and eras last longer. My gut says that start bias places civs in areas relevant to their historical background (as Japan I started a game in the actual real world location of the country once on an Earth map). Civs behave according to how their leaders acted in real life (Ghandi pursuing cultural victories for example. Random personalities changes their behavior and make it harder to predict their actions. Raging barbarians is self-explanatory. They just spawn at an increased rate. EDIT- The vets of the series can correct me if anything's wrong with my response. Noob here too.

Yup, that's correct.

For clarification: arid = mostly desert, temperate = default, wet = tropical style (i.e. jungles than forests and full of swamp)

Random AI behavior mixes up the default playstyle of the AI (i.e. Montezuma becomes cultural rather than a warmonger)

Oh and don't forget the Disable Start Bias. Normally Civs spawn at a certain specific point (e.g. Celts near forests/jungles, Polynesians at coasts, etc.). Disabling them makes the spawn point random.

[Trigger]

No-start biases refer to the preferred geographical starting locations some Civilizations have defined for them to help use their unique abilities. Carthage, with her free harbors, usually starts near the coast, as does England and the Ottomans (generally speaking). America has a bias for river starts. Hiawatha will start in the middle of some forests, etc. The game only matches geography in random map generation. Scenarios and custom maps can have additional starting aspects to them.

Fragamemnon
The Man. The Myth.
The Legend.
(Today, 02:22 PM)

Cool beans. I never knew that.

[KePoW]

It was discounted, but not by much. I think the lowest I saw it hit was like $22.99. I would have bought it for that but I bought so many other games for much, much less, that I decided to just sit on it for now. I'll see what it drops down to for the Halloween or Christmas sale, and hopefully I'm through my backlog of games enough to feel good about spending over $20 on an expansion.

Ok thanks, was wondering if I should wait or not.

[Boss Doggie]

Oh right, don't forget the "Billion Years" age too. The older the age, the less hilly/mountainous the map is.

[Taffer]

Oh right, don't forget the "Billion Years" age too. The older the age, the less hilly/mountainous the map is.

I've also heard that the world age affects the amount of oil (more in an older world), anyone know if that's the case?

[Boss Doggie]

No info in that in civfanatics. They only mention mountainous/hilly effect as part of the script.

So... do people here know how to play the Netherlands? They're the only one I suck with.

[ZZMitch]

Thanks for all the info. I am interested because I have never played a marathon game and want to give that a try. I just wanted to make sure I made a good map for such a long game heh.

I think I am going to play a huge map, marathon, fractal, with complete kills and raging barbarians. Going to play as Washington and work for a domination victory. This will probably be my last game before i move on to King difficulty.

Unfortunately it looks like fractal maps don't get some advanced options because they are very random but it seems like a good choice. I like not knowing what to expect.

[Fragamemnon]

No info in that in civfanatics. They only mention mountainous/hilly effect as part of the script. So... do people here know how to play the Netherlands? They're the only one I suck with.

I played one early on (contintents plus, standard speed,Immortal) but I had a broken-ass Petra+flood plain start (not hard getting Petra on Immortal, and Netherlands wants to go that tech route anyway for Poulders) that made things easy. Easy science win.

I'd say try to win diplo using industrial/modern units to beat down anyone with a respectable GPT (they should make for good puppet empires) and go full down commerce taking two points of patronage at the end. This assumes a water map. Wide science might also be decent but with no early religion and no early UB it seems worse than just going tall w/ four cities and bunkering down for the game.

I do think you want to have some conquest and expansion in your game, to abuse the UA to its best.