Playing Civ 5

[notyoueither]

I thought it might be a nice change to have a thread here where we discuss playing Civ 5.

I'm currently clicking around experimenting with a City and Town approach to assist in beating Immortal in single player. The idea is not entirely ICS (I hate that name for the strategy beyond the initial idea from Civ 2) but trying to be more balanced with larger centres that I develop as metropolii with smaller towns filling space in between. The idea is a take-off on what people in the Civ 3 strategy forum called camps.

I think I'm finally getting it down. It is very powerful. The smaller camps are much more useful in 5 than in 3. In 3 the camps would produce troops and fill in culture gaps, eventually being disbanded when larger cities could make better use of the land and to rejig the corruption math. Can't do that no more (disband your own cities) and besides the towns/camps can produce happiness, culture, science, and gold to help the empire along whatever path you point it in.

I've been playing Rome a lot. The Power of Rome may not be a flashy unique ability, but it is very solid for my buildery half and the Legions and Ballistae help get my warmonger on. It is fun to build ~10 warriors and see how far you can go with them as they upgrade through the ages and promote through a few wars. I keep forgetting to rename them though.

So, what are you doing with the game? Do you have a favoured strategy? Are you finding some thing or other particularly fun? Having trouble figuring something out? Share or ask. Maybe we can have a discussion about playing civ on a web site devoted to the game.

[Ijuin]

The "City and Town" approach you describe sounds interesting, but beware that EACH settlement that you build adds 15% to the cost of Social Policies.

[notyoueither]

Yeah. It is not what you do if seeking to win by culture. You can get social policies if you work at it though. On a huge map with 28 cities I have earned 10 policies by T220. The next policy is costing 5445, but I generate 339 cpt.

[fed1943]

I tried and produces better results than a pure ICS.
Not really big cities like in civ2 or civ4, instead 6-7-8 pop as "big" cities and 4 or
less pop as small ones.
As I played France it worked very well for SP,too.

[notyoueither]

I've heard that France is one of the civs of choice. The free 2 cpt per city would be very nice. Alas, I am quite stubborn. SPQR!

[Dr Strangelove]

I tend to go more for as spread out and hog the resources approach. If I understand the game correctly cities no longer have the fixed cross shaped zone. The can spread out and "occupy" whatever zone you want them to. The ability to dictate the focis of each city is very usefuil too. You can build cities on the edge of a tundra zone, put farms in the temperate plains or grasslands, get production points from mines or lumbar mills, then put a bunch of trading posts in otherwise useless tundra areas and, voila, you have a little money factory.
I am a bit miffed that factories have to have coal. They should change the game so that if a factory is in a city with hydro, solar, or nuclear power it doesn't have to use a coal point. Also I'd like to see at least one additional gold boosting building, maybe supermarket or advanced banking.

[notyoueither]

The potential for 37 hexes used by a city with a three hex radius is nice, but I find it remains just that: potential. Unless I use surrounding cities and towns to bring the third ring into my borders, I get few of those hexes at a distance of three from the city.

I hated doing it. It felt wrong, but eventually I buckled and began placing towns inside the three hex radius of my capital.

[Jaybe]

I've always found having some spare tiles (of different types) to be handy. Say you've been emphasizing gold in the city, but suddenly you want to crank some building or unit out pronto (and you don't have the $$ to just purchase it). Having some spare lumber mills or mines that you haven't worked in awhile -- and haven't turned into TP either, would be a good idea.