Civ V- tips for someone with a life?

[Maddeline]

The title is not meant to be condescending. I get about 4 hours to myself, assuming I'm reserving six hours for sleep thanks to work and schooling.


I've clocked like 18 hours in on this ONE match that I've nicknamed "Ocean Von Bismark" in which I got a shit spawn on a bad luck random map as, well, Bismark. I basically had to do my best impersonation of Hitler with the ideas of a colonial-era British General. I didn't get three cities until like 890 BC or something like that which is depressing. I pulled through with the win but only because the AI is garbage at fighting off or building naval forces because "reasons."


Anywho, any tips on how to make a game not last 18 hours? Because I have tried it on fast pace mode before and it didn't help much. I'm not new to civ, I used to play Civ Rev on the 360 all time and while they are totally different beasts the overrall concepts seem to be the same.

You can't win without pushing. You can't push without being lucky or having tech. You can't have tech without having cities. Fewer cities you have, the less science you have. Therefore the higher the chance you will lose.

I don't care about the unhappiness penalties because that proves my point that the devs realized the best strategy was to just plop down as many cities rapid fire as you could.


Also, while any Civ experts are at it, who are the better/top tier civs? Japan's bonus seems like it would be very helpful in that mid-early late game area where the infantry is wonky

 

[Brovo]

Step 1: Pick Rome.
Step 2: Rush your tech tree toward Writing.
Step 3: While doing this, pick the Liberty tree.
Step 4: Grab the early worker from Liberty while building a monument. Build a shrine after (since the prerequisite tech for writing gets you the shrine) so you can start generating faith for a pantheon. Build a scout somewhere in this time.
Step 5: The moment you finish writing, drop everything you're doing to build The Great Library. Start researching with this priority: Tile Improvements, Science, Military, Economy. Happiness is useful but can be sacrificed for a few turns if you need more currency first.
Step 6: Grab the most expensive tech you can as your free tech for building TGL.
Step 7: At this point your capital should be mostly upgraded thanks to your worker.
Step 8: Using your scout you should have found a neighbour or two by now. Once Rome is at a population of 4-5, build your first settler.
Step 9: Unlock your free settler via Liberty cultural tree. Colonize two places at once, like the big purple cancer you are.
Step 10: Expand in the direction of the neighbour you feel you are most capable of killing. (Judge this via terrain & distance.)
Step 11: Keep producing Settlers out of Rome until you have 5-6 cities. The more cities you have, the more broken Rome's bonus becomes, but early game you won't be able to handle more than 5-6 cities because of happiness maluses. (+25% build speed for all cities if building they're making is in the capital. Fucking bonkers for empire building and colonization.)
Step 12: Connect your cities via roads. Use your pantheon choice to grab the science bonus from roads. Build a monument in each city first, then a library, then whatever your empire most needs.

Once you've unlocked Legions and Rome's unique siege unit...
Step 1: Build 3-4 legions, 3 siege unit.
Step 2: Pick a neighbour.
Step 3: Surround your units around that neighbour's city.
Step 4: Declare war, rush your units in, smash his fucking teeth in. Mainly because your units are hilariously stupid powerful for the early game, and that's all you need them for.
Step 5: Conquer all of the AI's cities as fast as you can. Be warned, your siege units will need to set up, so the AI's city will attack you for one turn.
Step 6: Conquer the city. The AI may try to retaliate, but probably won't because it's tragically bad at the game. Use your Legions to escort your siege units and kill anyone who tries to stop you.
Step 7: If any of your units get injured below 50% health, pull them out of the retaliation range of the AI's cities and let them heal themselves back up. You've got time, take advantage of it.
Step 8: Once you finish conquering your first neighbour, use your legions to build roads between each of the conquered cities (if they aren't there already) and then connect one of the conquered cities to your closest city to connect all the resources that entire empire had to your own.
Step 9: You're Rome. 25% build speed increase on everything after courthouse is done.
Step 10: Congratulations you've broken the game with a fucking stupid amount of science nobody is ever going to catch up to due to your 25% speed buff that no other nation will have.
Step 11: Hit "end turn" for 300 turns to achieve a science victory.

If there's no science victory, just conquer everyone one by one with your progressively accelerating out of control empire.

Basically the trick to Civilization is realizing that the games have no answer for the ever-accelerating empire. The increase in cost to science is nowhere near matched by the sheer amount of scientific output you can achieve via The Great Library/library spamming and the science pantheon you can acquire through faith. When you get ahead in science, you generally perpetually stay ahead because you will stack numbers faster than your opponents. Basically, think of it this way: If everyone has doubling numbers every few years, the person with the largest starting number will go further and further and further away from anyone behind them. If the other empires have 5 in science, they'll eventually get to 10, then 20, then 40, then et cetera. If you start at 10 in science, you will keep doubling just like them, but the gap will progressively increase until you could crush them with zero effort. Here's a graph to demonstrate from a game I completed a long while back now.

As you can see, after a certain point, I just kept accelerating past the AI. I conquered two neighbours, and otherwise sat on my ass and abused Rome's 25% build stim to keep my empire's science production far ahead of everyone else by always being able to build the new science buildings sooner than everyone else.

Good other choices for nations are...
Japan: Because their bonus for their units always fighting at full strength is useful.
Babylon: Because they science better than anyone else, and if you have the science advantage, you can upgrade your units before anyone else and crush them through Bigger Numbers Diplomacy.
Korea: Because they also science better than anyone else.

I normally recommend Rome though, because once you start conquering your neighbours, you can reform their cities into being useful members of your empire producing even more science for you 25% faster than you could with other empires. Rome is made to blob into a disgusting mass of cancer, and they do it better than anyone else.

 

[Maddeline]

Step 1: Pick Rome.
Step 2: Rush your tech tree toward Writing.
Step 3: While doing this, pick the Liberty tree.
Step 4: Grab the early worker from Liberty while building a monument. Build a shrine after (since the prerequisite tech for writing gets you the shrine) so you can start generating faith for a pantheon. Build a scout somewhere in this time.
Step 5: The moment you finish writing, drop everything you're doing to build The Great Library. Start researching with this priority: Tile Improvements, Science, Military, Economy. Happiness is useful but can be sacrificed for a few turns if you need more currency first.
Step 6: Grab the most expensive tech you can as your free tech for building TGL.
Step 7: At this point your capital should be mostly upgraded thanks to your worker.
Step 8: Using your scout you should have found a neighbour or two by now. Once Rome is at a population of 4-5, build your first settler.
Step 9: Unlock your free settler via Liberty cultural tree. Colonize two places at once, like the big purple cancer you are.
Step 10: Expand in the direction of the neighbour you feel you are most capable of killing. (Judge this via terrain & distance.)
Step 11: Keep producing Settlers out of Rome until you have 5-6 cities. The more cities you have, the more broken Rome's bonus becomes, but early game you won't be able to handle more than 5-6 cities because of happiness maluses. (+25% build speed for all cities if building they're making is in the capital. Fucking bonkers for empire building and colonization.)
Step 12: Connect your cities via roads. Use your pantheon choice to grab the science bonus from roads. Build a monument in each city first, then a library, then whatever your empire most needs.

Once you've unlocked Legions and Rome's unique siege unit...
Step 1: Build 3-4 legions, 3 siege unit.
Step 2: Pick a neighbour.
Step 3: Surround your units around that neighbour's city.
Step 4: Declare war, rush your units in, smash his fucking teeth in. Mainly because your units are hilariously stupid powerful for the early game, and that's all you need them for.
Step 5: Conquer all of the AI's cities as fast as you can. Be warned, your siege units will need to set up, so the AI's city will attack you for one turn.
Step 6: Conquer the city. The AI may try to retaliate, but probably won't because it's tragically bad at the game. Use your Legions to escort your siege units and kill anyone who tries to stop you.
Step 7: If any of your units get injured below 50% health, pull them out of the retaliation range of the AI's cities and let them heal themselves back up. You've got time, take advantage of it.
Step 8: Once you finish conquering your first neighbour, use your legions to build roads between each of the conquered cities (if they aren't there already) and then connect one of the conquered cities to your closest city to connect all the resources that entire empire had to your own.
Step 9: You're Rome. 25% build speed increase on everything after courthouse is done.
Step 10: Congratulations you've broken the game with a fucking stupid amount of science nobody is ever going to catch up to due to your 25% speed buff that no other nation will have.
Step 11: Hit "end turn" for 300 turns to achieve a science victory.

If there's no science victory, just conquer everyone one by one with your progressively accelerating out of control empire.

Basically the trick to Civilization is realizing that the games have no answer for the ever-accelerating empire. The increase in cost to science is nowhere near matched by the sheer amount of scientific output you can achieve via The Great Library/library spamming and the science pantheon you can acquire through faith. When you get ahead in science, you generally perpetually stay ahead because you will stack numbers faster than your opponents. Basically, think of it this way: If everyone has doubling numbers every few years, the person with the largest starting number will go further and further and further away from anyone behind them. If the other empires have 5 in science, they'll eventually get to 10, then 20, then 40, then et cetera. If you start at 10 in science, you will keep doubling just like them, but the gap will progressively increase until you could crush them with zero effort. Here's a graph to demonstrate from a game I completed a long while back now.

As you can see, after a certain point, I just kept accelerating past the AI. I conquered two neighbours, and otherwise sat on my ass and abused Rome's 25% build stim to keep my empire's science production far ahead of everyone else by always being able to build the new science buildings sooner than everyone else.

Good other choices for nations are...
Japan: Because their bonus for their units always fighting at full strength is useful.
Babylon: Because they science better than anyone else, and if you have the science advantage, you can upgrade your units before anyone else and crush them through Bigger Numbers Diplomacy.
Korea: Because they also science better than anyone else.

I normally recommend Rome though, because once you start conquering your neighbours, you can reform their cities into being useful members of your empire producing even more science for you 25% faster than you could with other empires. Rome is made to blob into a disgusting mass of cancer, and they do it better than anyone else.

Thank you SOOO much