Civilization V – Tips and Tricks for Getting Started

Before you play the Sid Meier’s Civilization V game, you will definitely want to know these simple but useful tips and tricks. If you have any tips feel free to share with us!

Things to Know Before Playing

  • The AI is hard-coded to declare war on you, sooner or later, if you expand into “their” territory. This generally means that if you see something nice next to them and settle to claim it, you’ll have trouble later. It’s similar to how in vanilla Civ 4, a civilization with a different religion was destined to one day hate you so much they’d go to war, guaranteed. If you’re afraid of stepping on toes, go for a compact Civilization rather than trying to set up borders as far as you can get away with.
  • Combine this with the fact that the AI is really bad at breaking through a strong choke-point(mountains!) and the fact that eventually they will throw gifts at you to end a losing war(emphasis on eventually, decline bad or neutral offers until it happens) and this can be profitable.
  • If you are afraid of losing wars and getting pushed around, play China and keep a Great General around for his ability to generate a Citadel. With proper unit cover, a Citadel will never be dislodged by anything a computer player can do in early warfare, where you’ve got the most to fear from a too-strong early bully.
  • You don’t need to build roads to connect resources!
  • And if you want to immediately ruin any sense of balance among leaders and spoil the game for yourself, play as Alexander and butter up as many city-states as you can. Your Civilization will accelerate wildly after the first few food or culture bonuses. Combo this with the City State Diplomacy mod and you’ll forget what it’s like to lose. Also amazing to see somebody start a war with you and get savagely reamed by your 7 best friends.
  • City State Diplomacy is itself a pretty great mod though, bringing back the sort of Diplomat units from Civ 4 that seem to have gone missing.
  • Pick one of the victory types and aim for it from the beginning. If you’re going for cultural victory, for example, your policies/techs/city specialties will be very different than if you were going for military victory.
  • If you are playing on any difficulty above Chieftain, a military is a necessary evil and even if you never have to use it, you need to have it just so the AI won’t smell weakness and invade. Butter up some militaristic city states nearby, if you don’t want to divert your cities’ attention to producing units.
  • If you have Gods & Kings, don’t underestimate religion. You can get some pretty awesome perks from it.
  • You should settle your cities around as many luxury resources as possible, and away from resource-barren tiles like deserts and tundra.
  • Scout as much as possible at the start of a new game. You can find ancient ruins which upgrade your units & cities, City-States who have unique resources, and other Civs who will be valuable trading partners.
  • City-states will give you gold the first time you meet them: 30 gold if you were the first Civ to meet them, and 15 gold if you were not the first.
  • Barbarian camps cannot spawn on a tile that you are able to see. If you find yourself with extra units, consider placing them on tiles outside your city borders to prevent barbarians from spawning close to you.

Best Way to Learn to Play Better

Depends what you’re doing badly. Also, are you genuinely enjoying the game? If so, then I’d say you were playing it perfectly. IDC very much whether I win or not; I quite enjoy the emergent storylines the game throws out.

On military, I also play Battle for Wesnoth. The BfW combat AI is formidable. But brcause I can beat that, military threats in Civ are not actually a threat until they’re at ‘they could wipe us off the planet’ level. So playing another turn-based tactical wargame would give you a better feel for combat. Have you read Sun Tsu’s Art of War? It’s not a long book. Read it, and try the advice in it, as far as you can apply it to a computer game. See what difference it makes.

The other way is to choose constraints. Generate a random map with a particular Civ. I’d suggest a choice for you, random for the AI players. Then replay the same map with the same Civ for you and different randoms, or vice versa. IOW only permit some variations. Try to pretend you don’t know every corner of the map and try not to exploit past knowledge. See which types of Civs you tend to do better with, and where you struggle. Which specials are you good at exploiting? If you hit an interesting decision point, save then try one. Then go back and try the other.

This will give you better insight on what you do well and what you’re bad at. If you always end up going for a diplomatic or a science victory, turn that option off in the menu.

Try to win a culture victory with Ghenghis, or Atilla. Or a conquest victory with, oh, Enrico Dandolo (I was going to say Gandhi, but that’s a cheap gag.).

Or try a game at a lower difficulty, then the same game and the same game at a higher difficulty, and see which easy parts become harder.

Also, play against human opponents. They act a lot differently to the AI.

It doesn’t really matter what you try, as long as you find it interesting. Also, if you find the AI cheating at higher difficulties tiresome, try putting them into teams at a lower difficulty, see if that makes any difference.

I’d not going to recommend anything specific, but there’s some general pointers for how to troubleshoot your own skills and, I hope, have some interesting games while you figure more things out.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8086 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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