Civ 5: BNW Early Game Guide

A Civ 5: BNW Guild on early game tactics and grand strategy. For Beginners to Experts.

Overview

The Early game in Civ 5 is extremely important. Your choices at the start of the game with structure the way the rest of the game will be played. However your early game choices will not be the only determining factors of how the game goes. Some game aspects such as the map, civilization, and resource near you will also have an important effect on what choices you will be given in order to build your empire.

Each Civilization and start will have their advantages and disadvantages. The most important thing to remember is to make the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. This guild will focus on providing you with knowledge on how to make the best out of your early game and create a commanding lead against your opponents (whether its against AI or actually people). The large amount of early game options are what make Civ 5 (in my opinion) a great strategy game.

*This Guild was made for the Brave New World expansion of the game, however some aspects of the guild can be applied to vanilla as well as Gods & Kings.

Civilizations, Settling, and Surrounding Resources

The first most important choice of starting a game would be to choose your civilization. There are a total of 43 civilizations in Civ 5 of which there are 5 types of ways to win a game:

• Domination Victory
  
• Cultural Victory
  
• Science Victory
  
• Diplomatic Victory
  
• Time Victory

Each civilization has its own victory type which will end up being much easier than some of the other victory types. For example, Japan has a much easier time winning by a domination victory rather than a cultural victory. Although each type of victory is possible for each civilization; I strongly recommend going for the type of victory your civilization has a clear advantage over if playing on some of the harder difficulties (ie: King - Deity).

Knowing what type of victory each civilization should go for is quite easy to tell so I won't really cover it in this guild.Once you have picked your civilization and map you will load up the game and start with one of the most important turns of the game. Turn 1.

In most cases the starting spot your settler is placed is the best place for your first city. However, there are a few cases in which it is not to your advantage to settle right away. This is a hard thing to really notice because most of us just want to settle and start working on technologies and building structures or units. A good example of when not to settle right away is shown in the picture below.

Now most people might settle right away in this position which isn't necessarily the end of the world, but it really isn't the most optimal spot. As you can see if I settle right where it is placed my city will acquire the Gems and Ivory resources right next to the city. This is good but it is much more efficient for you to move your settler to the hill across the river and settle there your next turn. This is because when you settle on a hill your city starts with 3 production. (1 production from the city and 2 from the hill). Now you might be saying "wait if I settle on the hill my city boundaries won't include both the gems or the ivory!" This is true but on turn one you wont need it. Your city will only have a population of one so it will only work the city and one other tile. Plus you wont need those resources connected to your empire right away because: One, you don't have a worker to improve those tiles to increase your happiness; and Two, you won't have the technologies even required to improve those tiles. By the time you research the technologies needed for both of those tile improvements your city should expand enough for those resources to be encompassed within your empire.

Just make sure when moving your settler that you don't move too far away from a resource that will be necessary. Remember that your city can only work tiles 3 spaces away from your city, and that you can only purchase tiles this distance away as well. Although, if your city is producing enough culture, it will expand more than 4 tiles. This rarely happens until your city has a large population and in most cases if your city reaches this level it is easier to just build another city next to your current one.

As well as finding the most optimal spot for your first city, taking a minute and looking at your surrounding resources will help you decide which technologies you are going to rush. In almost every case the first technology that you should research is Pottery. With Pottery you open up the Shrine and Granary buildings in your city. Both are really useful in their own ways but if you are looking for faster growth obviously go with a granary as one of your first buildings. If acquiring a religion is more important to your civilization I would recommend getting a Shrine after you get a monument.

Once your city is first build there are a few standard things to build in order to make the most out of your empire. For me the build order for my city looks like this for most civilizations with a few exceptions (in order from first built to last):

• Scout (In order to explore the map faster to look for my second city placement)
  
• Monument (ALWAYS, ALWAYS get your monuments early. Early game culture is a must)
  
• Granary or Shrine (usually depends on the civ, but both are extremely good)
  
• World Wonder of your Choice (W.W. are important to a point but don't get too focused on only building wonders)

The main strategy behind the order of the build is this. First your scout is very important and although a lot of people decide not to build one; I must strongly recommend that you build a scout either first or second. The logic behind this is all about vision and ancient ruins! The scout is able to move 2 tiles regardless of what terrain is present. This allows you to explore much faster than your warrior and grant vision on new lands that will be necessary for your second and third cities. With an extra unit which is extremely mobile it will also allow you to find more ancient ruins which contain useful early game bonuses.

The next build I choose for my city would be the monument. The monument gives you +2 Culture in your city which is needed to get an early social policy. I will talk later about choosing the best social policy for your civilization later in the game, but this building is ABSOLUTELY needed either first or second for fast expansion or growth.

For your second building in your city a Shrine or a Granary are very useful in this early part of the game. Choosing between the two is very situational. For example take a look at the picture below.

As you can see the picture above, a Granary would be a high priority choice over a Shrine. Although getting a religion is important and Will increase your points by roughly 80 pts, in this case the growth from a Granary and having two wheat tiles is just too good to pass up. Depending on what game length you're playing on will determine how much faith you will end up missing by going granary first. On standard speed a Granary will usually take around 10 turns depending on your city, and a Shrine about 6 turns. This means on average going Granary over Shrine will cause a loss of 16 faith compared to if you went Shrine then Granary. The bonus of going Granary first is that your city will grow much faster increasing the amount of tiles you can work thus increasing production which will allow you to build your Shrine much faster. In most cases on average going Granary first will cause a true loss of about only 10 faith with all these factors included.

After your Granary and/or Shrine most people will go for a World Wonder. Picking the W.W. right for your civilization depends on what technologies you have completed and which type of victory you are trying to go for. I wont suggest any W.W. to go for in this guide but I will make another guide specifically on W.W. later on and the ups and downs of each. Just remember to choose wisely on your W.W. if playing on one of the harder difficulties, because on anything Emperor or higher, you will be wasting your time trying to build all the wonders while the AI will be both building W.W. and expanding their empire. On the lower difficulties (King or lower) you shouldn't have a problem picking up a few wonders for your city but just don't make that your complete focus because it won't make you a better player in the long run!

Social Policy Trees

Our next important topic for early game is Social Policies. Once you get your first social policy you must make one of Four choices. Tradition, Liberty, Honor, and Piety are the three choices you must choose from during the ancient era. All of the policy trees are useful and usually you only choose from three of them. Of all four the two best in my opinion are Tradition and Liberty. Rather than telling you which one to get i'll explain the pros and cons of each and explain WHEN you should pick which one.


Tradition
This social policy is one that I have always liked and feel that it might be under rated or even not used as often as it should. The main reason to get this social policy is if you plan on sticking to just a few cities throughout the game and want to focus on having massive growth. I feel that this policy tree is very well suited for those playing on the lower difficulties and who want to get a clear early advantage against the AI. Some of the policies help with , wonder , and of course which is needed to get your cities to massive . Also by picking this social policy you also unlock the Hanging Gardens W.W. which provides a huge boost to city growth. I recommend going into this social tree when you're playing civs that benefit greatly from few large cities such as:

• Venice
  
• India
  
• Ethiopia

Although tradition works well with almost every civilization I feel that the 3 listed above should almost always pick tradition as their first social policy. Finishing the social tree is also very important because it provides +15% Growth and a free Aqueduct in your first four cities. It also allows the purchase of Great Engineers with Faith starting in Industrial Era.

Liberty
The Liberty social tree is the most common tree to choose with most civilizations because it provides great advantages to almost any civ. Going down this route is usually because you want to expand fast and get your empire another city without actually having to build a settler. What I have found is that the best way to go through this social tree is in this order:

• Citizenship (Tile improvement construction rate increased by 25% and a Worker appears near the Capital.)
  
• Republic (+1 Production in every City and +5% Production in cities when constructing Buildings.)
  
• Collective Rule (Speeds the training of Settlers by 50% in the Capital and a free Settler appears near the Capital. If playing Venice a Great Merchant of Venice appears)
  
• Representation (Each city you found will increase the Culture cost of policies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a Golden Age.)
  
• Meritocracy (+1 Happiness for each City you ownconnected to the Capital and -5% Unhappiness from population cin non-occupied Cities.
  
  Following this order will provide almost any civilization with a great start expanding your empire across the map. The first policy citizenship is a must! By getting this you get a free worker saving you roughly 8 turns if you were trying to build one, and the improved construction rate is also very helpful. Usually by the time you get your second pick Republic, you will be 1/3 of the way through the W.W. you have chosen (if you followed the guide above on early game). Republic will speed up this process of getting the W.W. which is necessary because when playing with friends, the early W.W. go by fast.
  
  Your third pick is pretty obvious. Getting Collective Rule gives you a free settler which not only saves you the 8 - 12 turns it would have taken to create the settler, but also keeps the city growing. Once you have your second settler the next two policy choices are up to you. If your happiness is ok and you won't be bogged down by creating a new city, then by all means make another. However before you do make sure you get a point into Representation before the city is constructed. This will make sure that your required for the next policy isn't ridiculously high.
  
  Now if you are playing on a harder difficulty or your happiness is quite low, I would strongly recommend that you get Meritocracy first and start to build a road to where your next city is going to be (once you have enough happiness to sustain yourself). However, only build this road if you have enough money and your city is far away. You don't want to be spending 5 or 6 gold a turn on road maintenance if you cant afford it.
  
  The main importance with the Liberty tree is that you finish it ASAP. When completing all of the policies it allows you to choose a great person out of any you want. The most common choice would be to go for the great scientist and have him improve one of your tiles in order to get a significant boost early and rocket you to the top of the mid and late game.
  
  Honor
  
  Theres not much to say about Honor since most of the time you'll be picking either Liberty or Tradition as your first social policy tree. However, that isn't to say that Honor should never be used. I've found there to be two times in which Honor is needed by your civilization. Either:
  
  • You're playing on a very hard difficulty such as Immortal or Deity and have turned on raging barbarians.
    
  • You're playing as the aztecs on a difficulty of Emperor or harder.
  
  For the first situation Honor is almost always needed with at least one point into the policy. This is for a few reasons. For starters playing on the very hard difficulties such as Immortal or Deity your units are already at a serious disadvantage against the barbarians. By putting on raging barbarians you're not making this any easier. Just unlocking the social policy is usually enough and should be done right away in order to not get immediately destroyed by 3 or 4 encampments 4 tiles away from your base. Another positive is that it also allows you to farm culture off the barbarians which will be popping up like crazy. I only put this in here for those who like an extremely difficult game and want to seriously challenge themselves.
  
  The second situation is much more practical. The aztecs already get culture off barbarians making them really strong at farming culture in the early game. When playing on the harder difficulties when barbarians pop up much more quickly, getting one point in honor will really improve your situation as the aztecs. You will be able to farm up to +15 on average per barbarian unit. This number goes up and down based the type of unit, going up the stronger the unit.
  
  Piety
  
  This policy tree is an interesting one. It's one of the ancient era trees, however, I would strongly discourage anyone from going straight into this tree. Getting a religion is important and very useful throughout the game, but going straight into piety WILL cause you to lag behind everyone on the harder diff.

Review and My Strategy to Science Dominance

Well to sum things up i'll quickly go over the main points you hopefully got from this guide and I hope I was helpful to someone. Civ can be challenging at times and some of the really hard difficulties just take time to figure out new strategies. I hope you all follow this guide somewhat but even better I hope you take this guide and change somethings into your own. Here are the main points from this guide:

• Think about who you want to play and what type of victory you're going to go for.
  
• When picking the difficulty do be aware that your strategies at Prince difficulty will most likely not work on immortal or deity.
  
• Before settling your first city look around and see if there is a better place to initially put the city. Where your settler starts is not always the best place for him to settle, however keep in mind that most cases it is.
  
• Always go Pottery as your first technology!!! Very rarely should you ever go anything else first.
  
• Look at your luxury resources and tiles and see what buildings or units are best for you to get and when. Without even looking at ones start I would still strongly recommend going: Scout > Monument > Shrine or Granary > Maybe a World Wonder.
  
• When picking which social policy tree to go down be sure to think back at what your civilization is good at and what you will need whether its getting a few large population cities, rapid expansion, Barbarian defense / Culture farming, or more in order to get a fast religion.

If you read the previous topics and start to understand them I really encourage you to go play a game of civ and test them out. These tactics are what I personally use along with SlantAndyellow and Puppet4hire in our games. This strategy seems to work on any difficulty but it really works shines in Immortal and Deity difficulties. Good luck and below I will leave a quick guide of how this strategy plays into one of the fastest tech boosts with a nation that isn't even meant for a science victory.

Super Science Strategy

So you want to get some super science using the strategy above? Well you're in luck because all you have to do is follow these easy steps and Bill Nye will look like a child playing with a Chemistry set.



What I have noticed in the online Civ 5 community is that Science is the name of the game. Most people want to get a huge advantage over their opponent scientifically in order to have more advanced units to dominate your opponent quite easily. Well you're in luck because if you manage to pull this off (which I have many times against my friends due to good starts) you'll have a significant lead over everyone else in the game.

So the first step in the life to science domination is to pick your civ. Although this tactic will work with almost any civilization, it is extremely useful if you pick a civilization that excels in science like Korea , Babylon, or the Assyrians. So just for ease lets say i'm playing the babylonians. The first thing i'm going to do is rush to writing in order to try and build the great library. This is really helpful if you get a start where your city is on a hill for more production.

The first technology you're going to research is Pottery. This will lead you into Writing which will allow you to one build the great library and two get a free great scientist. The first thing you will build while Pottery is being researched is a monument in order to get more Culture. Once Pottery is done you will try to build a granary at your city for faster expansion which will lead to more tiles worked ie. more tiles that can provide production. Then you should research Writing in order to get your free great scientist (which should be used as a tile improvement) and allow you to start working on the Great Library. Once Writing is done you should be researching Calendar (this will be explained later). Hopefully by this time your monument will give you enough culture for a social policy to be chosen. This is where the other half of your science boost will come in. You will start with the Liberty tree and either get citizenship or republic first. Which one you pick is based on whether you have tiles that when improved will help your production of the great library, if not pick republic.

By the time you get both Republic and Citizenship you should be very near to completing the Great Library. If you are successful in completing the Great Library you will be granted one free technology +3 and also get a free library in your city. This alone will increase your science significantly, but we're not done yet. The next thing you will do is use your free tech on Philosophy (since you researched calendar and writing philosophy should be open) which will allow you to build the Oracle. Building the Oracle is a must because by the time it is finished you will have completed the forth part of your social policy tree. The Oracle will provide you with the final part of the Liberty Social policy tree thus once again granting you a free great person of your choice. And obviously we pick the great scientist.

To sum things up by going straight to writing rushing the Great Library and then researching calendar, we open up Philosophy as our free tech from the Great Library. This will then lead you to build the Oracle which will boost your social policies straight to finishing the Liberty tree. If all of this is done properly with any civilization, you will establish a significant lead in science which no one else will be able to catch up until spies are acquired.

To finish this up and give you some perspective. With the babylonians if this is done right your extra science over every other civilization could be: +3 from the Great Library and one free tech, +8 from our first G.S., +8 from our second G.S. Leaving use +19 and one free tech ahead of everyone else. I usually find this to be the fastest way to get a large science boost over everyone else.

That pretty much sums up the science boost. This will almost always go flawlessly when your'e playing on a lower difficulty against AI. It's a great start for trying to win by a science victory and will put you on the next level of smart. Good Luck.

[hack wayne]

@Rex Kwon Do have you trialled the Great Library > Oracle path with Liberty on Diety, Epic game pace? Generally, if you go Liberty in Diety your cities will fall behind and lack the growth & economics to keep up. Used to be able get GL by turn 50 or so in Immortal but in Diety it is goin by turn 40 and sometimes 35.

[mikzin]

I always play a tradition run because of the massive culture and food boost. You said that it's usually better to play liberty, and then went into your science strategy with liberty, but it seems like tradition would be better for science since pretty much all science buildings are based off of population. Tradition will give you access to the Hanging Gardens, which is a huge early-game food boost, and then once you get the free aqueducts and food bonus in your capital, you're going to have a rapidly expanding population which will let you not only have those science buildings creating more passive science but also let you put in specialists without worrying about stagnation. The only real boost I can see with the liberty tree is the early settler and worker, but you can basically get both of those without using any production by 1. stealing a worker from a city-state and 2. buying the extra settler with gold you stockpile.

[Tomasillo Virutas]

I bought this game when I cut a finger off my left hand (I´m a carpenter) and I could play with only the mouse

[Lansov]

yes, civ can be played with one hand easily

[cchilders99]

Great guide. Can you tell me if this can be played with right hand only? I would like to purchase for someone with no use of left hand

[RH1N0]

Really great guide for newcomers

[Maicara]

Taking Honor as Germany is an essential, too

[Lord_Weasel]

How to win a science victory fool-proof:

Combine Liberty and Tradition, spam cities, and grow them to a huge size while maing sure you have plenty of luxuries to sustain yourself

[LU_An]

To add to your guide, I've found that unlocking honor is pretty useful when many barbarians around. Indeed, I usually send-out my warrior to go hunting for them to get that extra cultur boost. As an added bonus, my warrior gains loads of experience and, in small maps, the great general that you will gain from this experience will allow you to steal valuable ressources from your neighbours.

[Asylum]

Nice tips & guide for newcomers. Ty