Civilization 5 Brave New World

[TheSiege]

So my buddy left his laptop home while he is on vacation and I have been playing Civ5. But I am way confused about luxuries and happiness and all that jazz. Is there a good resource explaining everything? I spend 30 minutes yesterday attacking a town to finally realizing that it takes a melee unit to occupy it. Thanks

 

[frozentundra123456]

So my buddy left his laptop home while he is on vacation and I have been playing Civ5. But I am way confused about luxuries and happiness and all that jazz. Is there a good resource explaining everything? I spend 30 minutes yesterday attacking a town to finally realizing that it takes a melee unit to occupy it. Thanks

Isnt there an in-game tutorial? My grandson loves the game, and I have been trying to get into it. I have to admit though, that I am pretty much just guessing at what I am doing in regards to all the researches, buildings, happiness, religions, etc. There is just such a dizzying array of options, and some people even criticize Civ 5 as being "dumbed down".

 

[orbster556]

Isnt there an in-game tutorial? My grandson loves the game, and I have been trying to get into it. I have to admit though, that I am pretty much just guessing at what I am doing in regards to all the researches, buildings, happiness, religions, etc. There is just such a dizzying array of options, and some people even criticize Civ 5 as being "dumbed down".

The underlying game mechanics are 'dumbed down' vis-a-vis Civ IV BtS (to say nothing of some of the more comprehensive user mods).

Civ V's hex-based map is a welcome change as it removes the need to build stacks of doom. In almost every other aspect of game mechanics, however, I prefer Civ IV.

 

[darkewaffle]

The "Civopedia" which is available through the "Help" menu in the upper right is a pretty useful reference point in game. It's more of a glossary than a tutorial though.

Best way to get the hang of the game initially imo is to play single player on low difficulty and pay close attention to the advisor popups that appear - as turns wear on they'll introduce you to most elements of the game.

 

[silverpig]

The "Civopedia" which is available through the "Help" menu in the upper right is a pretty useful reference point in game. It's more of a glossary than a tutorial though.

Best way to get the hang of the game initially imo is to play single player on low difficulty and pay close attention to the advisor popups that appear - as turns wear on they'll introduce you to most elements of the game.

That's what I did. I bought Civ V recently as part of the humble bundle and have played through 2 games now. I was pretty blind in the first one and just kind of stumbled my way through thanks to the advisors and what not.

I have just finished my second game (I like playing long ones), and can start to see how things work.

 

[Bateluer]

The underlying game mechanics are 'dumbed down' vis-a-vis Civ IV BtS (to say nothing of some of the more comprehensive user mods).

Civ V's hex-based map is a welcome change as it removes the need to build stacks of doom. In almost every other aspect of game mechanics, however, I prefer Civ IV.

The 'stacks of doom' also made it easy to transport an army from one location to another. In Civ5, moving any significant force around quickly degrades into extreme tedium. And with the game's broke pacing problems, by the time you get your swordsmen to the enemy, you've developed musketman. And by the time you get musketman into position to attack, you've developed riflemen. And so on. Fortunately, the AI is dumb enough that you can just throw everything you have into research to get to the top of the tech tree and only build the top units.

Or, you could just play Civ4 as its the better game.

 

[JTsyo]

Try this link for game concepts.

Here's also a good reddit guide

 

[uhohs]

The underlying game mechanics are 'dumbed down' vis-a-vis Civ IV BtS (to say nothing of some of the more comprehensive user mods).

Civ V's hex-based map is a welcome change as it removes the need to build stacks of doom. In almost every other aspect of game mechanics, however, I prefer Civ IV.

pretty much this. I've been playing a lot of Civ V the past two weeks, and I decided to reinstall Civ IV sometime this week to re-affirm my preference for that.

 

[Juncar]

^ pretty much.

I got Civ 5 the same day it came out and was massively disappointed. I've recently tried the new DLCs after getting the Humble Bundle deal and it still has a lot of problems. It feels like they took away lot of the control from the game. The AI diplomacy is still crap and it is really tedious to move units around. They should have put a more reasonable limit on the tile restriction like max of 10 units per tile. There's been many frustrating moments where AI allies and city states blocked unit movements.

 

[Firsttime]

I enjoy Civ 5 with BNW more then I liked BTS.

Having an improvement on each "type" of luxury will give you +4 happiness. You don't get more for having additional improvements on the same type. What you can do is trade the extras to the AI for types you don't have to get another +4. Each city you have is -4 happiness and then an additional -1 for each size the city grows. There are obviously a ton of modifiers to that and special situations. But those are the basics. If you hover your mouse over the happiness number it will give you a breakdown of what's coming from where.

 

[BUnit1701]

I guess I am the opposite of most people, played Civ II and III and loved them both, but found Civ IV to be tedious and overcomplicated, with Civ V bringing things back to enjoyability.

 

[TidusZ]

The luxuries give you 4 happiness base. More cities/higher population creates unhappiness. If happiness is less than 0 it has bad effects on research/production/gold and unit fighting effectiveness. Having excess happiness gives you golden ages once you get enough, but it's not that important and the amount to reach a gold age goes up every time. You need luxuries to keep your happiness above 0 while expanding and growing your cities and you can also trade them to the ai for around 7 gold per turn.

If you want quick guide for success go babylon and research pottery -> writing, get the free great scientist and use him to build a research tile near your city and make sure it's being worked by the city (click city, click citizen management in top right, select tile to force work). As soon as you do that build the great library, then the national college (make sure to get the tech for that before great library finishes). After national college finishes build 2 or 3 settlers and just focus on building up those cities with workshops, libraries, etc. By turn 100-150 you'll probably wanna start getting walls in your cities and have some military defending so the ai doesn't declare war, but for the most part you want to stay out of war and just tech up and go for either culture victory (fast tech leads to culture buildings, world wonders that all have +culture (especially sistine chapel, cn tower, sydney opera house, maybe others), early archaeology, tourism, etc etc. When you get your first social policy choose tradition and then make sure you have the +15% wonder building by the time you start great library (probably get it second).

Another really quick strat that is nice is go Huns and quick tech their special siege unit, battering ram, and just go on the warpath taking towns. If your warrior gets a weapon upgrade from an ancient ruin he'll become a battering ram and you can take over other players capitals in the first 10 turns. Focus on taking out any expansions as soon as the ai puts them up. Demand tribute from city states that your army is near to. Keep the ai's spread as small as you can, while keeping good cities for yourself and razing the worse ones. Good cities should have good luxury resources nearby and river, some hills or trees... too much for this guide

 

[xantub]

I used to love Civilization games, but one day I tried a Paradox strategy game (Rome Universalis) and then Europa Universalis 3 and then Crusader Kings 2 (now Victoria 2 and EU4). I just can't go back to Civilization, I tried when Civ 5 came out, and it felt so arcady, after playing those grand strategy games, Civ feels like playing tic-tac-toe.

 

[Chaotic42]

The underlying game mechanics are 'dumbed down' vis-a-vis Civ IV BtS (to say nothing of some of the more comprehensive user mods).

Civ V's hex-based map is a welcome change as it removes the need to build stacks of doom. In almost every other aspect of game mechanics, however, I prefer Civ IV.

I like the stacks

When Civ 5 wraps up and I can get all of the expansions on the cheap, I may give it another shot. I think I enjoyed Master of Orion III more than Civ 5. Yes, I understand exactly how serious of a statement that is.

 

[IAteYourMother]

BNW Civ V > CIV IV BTS

 

[Maximilian]

Civ V sucked when it came out. Luckily none of it was due to bad design IMO. Love it now with BNW, performance has come on leaps and bounds in the late game too!

 

[KMFJD]

I used to love Civilization games, but one day I tried a Paradox strategy game (Rome Universalis) and then Europa Universalis 3 and then Crusader Kings 2 (now Victoria 2 and EU4). I just can't go back to Civilization, I tried when Civ 5 came out, and it felt so arcady, after playing those grand strategy games, Civ feels like playing tic-tac-toe.

I like the idea behind the Paradox games but have yet found one that is easily accessible, is EU IV any better?

 

[Nintendesert]

Civ5 is better than Civ4 now that the expansions are out. Just like Civ4 was better once the expansions came out.

 

[TidusZ]

Civ5 is better than Civ4 now that the expansions are out. Just like Civ4 was better once the expansions came out.

I only played with expansions and playing through a scenario other day with base game was so limited.

 

[Sulaco]

BNW vastly improves on the base game in all meaningful ways, and really makes it a worthy entry.
Vanilla Civ V was abhorrent, with awful AI and seriously dumbed-down gameplay.

BNW greatly improves the AI, pacing, and fleshes out the gameplay concepts and makes it a very good game.

The "1 unit per tile" nonsense is though, indisputably, a gimmick and a poor design decision. It's artificial, it's board-gamey, and it's woefully unrealistic and antithetical to anything approaching actual strategy. It's the Checkers version of a historical strategy game; board game rules arbitrarily shoe-horned into a deep, complex computer game. There's no defense for it, outside of "b-b-but stacks of DOOM!". Sorry, two wrongs don't make a right.

What's annoying about the mechanic is that the better way is so obvious to any strategy fan. Don't like stacks of doom? Ok, then give each unit a certain weight, factored into the particular terrain tile they're on, and make attrition an issue.
In other words, units should still be able to pass through occupied tiles, or even come to rest on one, but make there be a potential penalty for doing so. That would be something approaching actual realism and strategy. Don't make me have to have my spearman double back 7 MOVES/TURNS to the free tile on my right flank, because they couldn't possibly pass through the tile that my archers are sitting in.

 

[darkewaffle]

Your units can pass through your own units provided the movement/terrain cost is low enough.

I never played Civ4 but I've never had much problem with units in 5. Short of being at a severe terrain disadvantage, proper use of ballistic and ranged units can make short work of a city. Moving troops can be tedious but I find that is more often terrain dependent than anything else.

Also I kind of preferred AI in G&K rather then BNW. They were admittedly over-aggressive in GK but I feel like the pendulum swung too much back in the other direction with BNW and they are now overly passive.