Some Civilization V Tips

Thanks to Rob for these tips.

- Start small (1 or 2 cities until they reach population 5-ish), focus onsettling your cities nearResources (Strategic & Luxury),

- Don't build every building in every city -be selective, build for specialization (1 city builds military, 1 city generates cash, 1 city generates research, etc.)

- Learn about the various City-State offerings and choose your Allies based on your current needs (food bonus at start of game, culture bonus to grow quickly once established, military bonus if you're in a war).

- Spend some turns at "Avoid Growth" (check box in City Management screen) once your cities get to pop. 10 or so, to make sure your Economic and Happiness buildings are in place before growing too big,

- Keep an eye on your Military rating in the Demographics page, don't fall below 4th on the list or you WILL be attacked,

- Keep your military a managable size - don't overdo it or you'll sink yourself in maintenance costs (go for 2nd or 3rd largest military on the Demographics page - small enough to be economical, large enough to deter attack.


Civilization V Strategy for Winning:

(Thanks to K7 for the tip)

Here is a strategy on how to not get overrun by the AI and win a regular game of Civilization V.

First, set your autosaves to every 5 turns, and save 10 of them.

Manually control your workers until at least the late renaissance era. Don't let them run rampant. You only need ~1 worker per city. Start connecting your cities to your capital when they hit ~5 food.

A city needs a 3 tile radius to be fully optimized. Don't build useless cities (on deserts, snow, next to mountains, etc.), make sure they have plenty of good resources near them. The only time you would want to build a city in a "bad spot" is if theirs a strong strategic resource you need.

Focus on your economy. Economy, economy, economy. Don't go short on your military techs either.

Only build enough military units to hold off barbarians.

Eventually, an AI will attack you. Typically with this method, you won't have a strong enough military to stop them, but you should be rolling in the $$/happiness. Here's the trick... you ready for it?

Load the game ~10 turns back, and turn all your cities into production focus of building military units. Wait for the AI to attack you, hold them off, and stomp them.

I had tried 2 games on the prince difficulty before figuring this out (as japan and england), and lost both due to either negative income, terrible unhappiness, or both. Now I'm playing as Rome on a huge earth map, and I control nearly all of asia, have 80 gold/turn income, and 20 happiness. I have ~20 military units and am warmongering into europe.

Economy is the key. And auto saves.