How to "Sim City" the game

[The Loli Otaku]

Despite putting a fair amount of time into Civ 6, and even half a game into Civ 4 which I sorta just hated, I'm genuinely running out of time in Civ 5 games. I think where I've messed up is not realising that you have to really micromanage your citizens if you want science or culture yields but I think I just don't understand the system of this game. It feels great for the first hundred to two hundred years before slamming to an absolute halt. I've had games where I've ended up ahead of the cpu but unable to capitalise on anything due to techs progressing so slowly and games where the cpu has killed another civ or so in another continent and is so far ahead I can't build any sort of wonder or keep up with city states. How do you get mid to lategame progress without it slowing down to a snails pace?

[Anvos]

Well yes if you want to go King or higher you really need to start manually assigning populations, since the default modes create weird bottlenecks that will sabotage the city's growth if it can.

If you haven't done this already there is also the concept of specializing cities (since everybody needs at least 5).

Such as

Having 1 science city so you can concentrate the national wonder bonuses (preferably by a mountain for the observatory as well though if you can't just big growth on a river tile for the garden.

Having 1 culture city mostly this just needs population growth and to be founded by a river so you can stack the culture amplifiers and great people generation.

Having 1 trade city to make commerce, where depending on the map type you generally want it to be a coastal city with some resource it can work. River again can be a bonus for great people.

Having 1 Production/Military city, that is preferably a port so you can put the heroic epic and hopefully a military wonder there. Still rather want river if you can for the hydropower and great engineers.

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Further on higher difficulties you really need to B-Line to the science multiplier techs as you need them to catch up, especially if you don't go rationalism.

Another big thing with getting wonders on higher difficulties is using your great engineers on wonders rather than manufacturer great person improvements.

[knighttemplar1960]

The more the game progresses the more units and cities are on the map each one gets its turn so the longer you play the more time a turn takes.

Some of it depends on your settings. The higher the difficulty the larger head start the AI gets. You can choose quick at the start of the game for game pace but you may not get the entire map explored by the time the game ends if you do that.

If you are playing on a contents map and an aggressive AI spawns with passive neighbors snowballs can often occur. In that case you want to explore as quickly as possible so you can use diplomacy and spend gold to assist the more passive neighbors.

If you want more military action in a game ply on epic or marathon. The game will take much longer but you'll get to make more moves and attacks.

If you want to slow down AI expansion, turn on barbarians if you aren't playing with them, or turn them up to raging if you are. On Prince and lower the AI will often send out unescorted settlers and workers. The barbarians will capture them and when you clear an encampment you'll get a free worker without going to war. I've played games where I didn't build a single worker the entire game. I used captured workers for everything.

Barbarians will also pillage improvements which will slow enemy city growth and can even cause enemy happiness to go below -10 and trigger a revolt. Having barbarians on slows the game down too because the AI has another "civ" to move.

[Anvos]

Oh yeah three things I forgot.

1. If you're not playing a modded game with improved advanced set up to allow banning some civs, use an external random civ generator, so you can ban Civilizations like Zulu, Shoeshone, and Venice. Basically the AI sucks at playing Venice, so on higher difficulties Venice mostly just feeds their neighbor into a snowball. Shoeshone, because the other AI just don't know how to handle its defense bonus, so he snowballs too easy. Zulu, because the zulu bonus pretty much breaks on higher difficulties, which is made worse since Shaka is one of the worst city spam AI and playing on Emperor or above the AI doesn't take a large enough happiness hit to stop them form city spamming everywhere, which is worse with Shaka thanks to the military buff he has until later game.

2. Emperor or Above I highly recommend ticking off Time/Score, and Science. As the score just gets broken thanks to the AI being able to city spam and build units quickly (while ignoring bankruptcy rules) and Science victory becomes broken on harder difficulties thanks to increased tech pacing causing it to be way easier than Diplomacy, Culture, and Conquest.

Time/Score I also put as just a stupid victory condition since Diplomacy is already a release valve for the game is in stalemate. Plus I like to play with end game units.

3. If you want more time I highly recommend playing on Epic game speed as its a good balance between eras not lasting long enough to have wars on standard, and marathon's snail pace (where you can have tens of hours only to find out the map generator screwed you).

[kensw]

Originally posted by Anvos:

3. If you want more time I highly recommend playing on Epic game speed as its a good balance between eras not lasting long enough to have wars on standard, and marathon's snail pace (where you can have tens of hours only to find out the map generator screwed you).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=106484540

If you want more time I use this it slows research but leaves everything else alone.

[Matthew]

You don't actually need to micromanage that much. If you have slow science in the 2nd half of the game, there are likely 2 reasons why.

1. You want to choose the rationalism policy opener, and then secularism. And you need to make sure every city is working great scientist specialists. That is it. Any further micromanagement isn't necessary. It is a bit of a flaw in Civ 5 that you are essentially forced to work secularism scientists or else you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.

2. Each additional new city you settle increases tech cost by 5%. Contrary to what some will tell you, you make more than that with an additional city, so more cities = faster research. HOWEVER, only if the additional cities are developed. If you started settling a bunch of new cities and they don't have science buildings, it will start to slow down your tech rate considerably.

Thus, the "meta" game of 5 can be summed up as how quickly can you work great scientist slots in universities, and how many of those cities can you get.

And finally, when you say "ahead of the cpu" are you referring to score? If so, that doesn't mean anything. Score is heavily inflated by things like wonders. When you play on the higher difficulties, you are often towards the bottom for score for most of the game, but if you follow the above meta, you still surpass the cpu's in tech rate by the time you reach industrial. Don't waste your time building wonders you don't need, just focus on getting as many great scientist slots as possible.

[kensw]

OR - Do what I do - Just turn Off ALL the victory conditions and just enjoy playing the game. And yes the AI plays just fine this way each Civ does it's own thing.

[The Silent CivVer]

Matthew offers good advice here...

You should be looking at comparative:

a) Technology levels
b) Population and happiness
c) Tourism/culture
d) Economy (GPT) and Production (Hammers per turn)
e) City-state influence levels
f) Military size

These are the metrics that count.

I interpret what you have types that you are struggling to keep up in science. Hence you need to pay more attention to your population levels and your science production.

[Anvos]

Originally posted by Matthew:

You don't actually need to micromanage that much. If you have slow science in the 2nd half of the game, there are likely 2 reasons why.

1. You want to choose the rationalism policy opener, and then secularism. And you need to make sure every city is working great scientist specialists. That is it. Any further micromanagement isn't necessary. It is a bit of a flaw in Civ 5 that you are essentially forced to work secularism scientists or else you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.

2. Each additional new city you settle increases tech cost by 5%. Contrary to what some will tell you, you make more than that with an additional city, so more cities = faster research. HOWEVER, only if the additional cities are developed. If you started settling a bunch of new cities and they don't have science buildings, it will start to slow down your tech rate considerably.

1. You don't need rationalism at least up to Emperor if you do micromanage and make a proper stack the science modifier national wonders, science city. Yes its one of the most powerful policy trees, but if you manage your output and tech progression you can ignore it, and reap the economic and/or culture benefits of the others.

2. The bigger problem is if you're not playing liberty you also hurt your social policy rate, and tradition really wants you to play with mega cities instead of settling close.

[Matthew]

Well, technically you can ignore it all the way up to Deity. The point is that there is a significant gap with or without it. I only mentioned secularism, which is imo the most significant of the tree, but the full tree is a night and day difference if you want the 2nd half of the tech tree to go by quickly. Just the opener and secularism is a decent compromise if you don't want the entire tree.

Unfortunately, the point of economic and culture benefits doesn't hold. If you want a strong culture game, you want to get to hotels, airports, and internet as fast as possible. Which means rationalism. The culture game "meta" typically has you spend some in-between into aesthetics, but finishing rationalism first before finishing aesthetics.

And a strong economic game doesn't have much to do with policies. Rationalism gives gold per science building, which is more or less worth what you'll get out of any other monetary policy. If you want more gold per turn, it is usually done through more land. And faster science allows you to get more land easier. Faster military techs to take the land, faster happiness techs or wonders to keep cities happy and growing.

Science is king, an established fact for well over a decade now. Like I said, it is a bit of a flaw in Civ 5. Any other strategy which isn't focused on working great scientists is a clear disadvantage.

[Anvos]

Honestly I'd say Piety is stronger economically, from making temples provide 20% income bonus to the city, and it becomes even more tilted if you have a religion with a gold generator. Then add in that Holy Sites provide gold and more faith.

Patronage if you have a strong economy can also provide decent science from city states while helping you control the world congress and getting all the ally and friend bonuses.

Basically while Rationalism is the strongest its not that dominant that others are harming yourself far behind (as long as you get the science modifier techs of each era first). Though I do agree that one of the problems with Civ 5 and why I disable Science Victory is how much science in general is stronger than the other basic resources.