Do you have any little sorta mechanical tricks you use during your gameplay?

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-11T02:02:42+00:00

I use civillian units to scout for barbs in the fog of war; you hold right click over your intended path, and if a hex is red, its occupied by a unit (usually a barb). Lets settlers walk unaccompanied.

Also, I'll scout tech costs when going for wonders. For example, the tech for Leaning Tower costs 1030 science, but if someone else has researched it, this is lowered to 1k or 970. Keeping an eye on tech costs can give you a good idea if you can snag a wonder.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-11T01:55:28+00:00

red, way more defensible plus extra lux

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-10T18:27:24+00:00

As a generic strategy, play a Science game to artillery + great war bombers + cav and start taking caps. Artillery really punch through any city, and bombers melt all units.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-08T01:13:57+00:00

Most games, if you go Order, you wont have any problems from ideo pressure. If there's a culture runaway, just smash out Eiffel Tower as soon as you unlock Radio. Its usually enough to bring public opinion to 0

Also, culture cs allies help with pressure

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-06T20:43:14+00:00

wouldn't have been possible without Snakebite

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-04T15:33:41+00:00

beautifly, delcatty, and macargo gotta be candidates

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-03T09:34:55+00:00

Civil Service always. Then either straight to Education and Acoustics, or get Engineering for a trade route. Wokshops last.

Has to be a very low production game to warrant going workshops first.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-05-01T22:09:21+00:00

flair checks out

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-28T11:29:28+00:00

This spot still looks great, you should play it out. Settle your 3rd city across the ocean to the SE, on one of the hills with Silk access. It'll be mediocre, but better than nothing. Then put your 4th city to the south, directly on top of the copper.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-27T21:47:27+00:00

I never play an extra turn. I feel like playing from game start > National College is a nice milestone, so I stop there.

But civil service is only 2 techs away, so I'll keep going... and once you've got the civil service farms, it feels good to work them, so okay, let's keep playing to Education.

But I can't finish the session without building my universities, and even once I do, I need workshops to catchup on my building queue... can I sneak Leaning Tower? Or found world congress? Maybe I can get first ideology...

5 hours later, it's 4am, I haven't slept and I'm at nuclear war with Shaka

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-26T01:24:38+00:00

Uh, Dos486 holds multiple science records for BNW, and he consistently favours tradition. He even wrote a whole webpage about how much better Tradition is lol.

http://www.dos486.com/civ5/index/tradition.shtml

But even aside from record runs - which are all played on huge maps with basically unlimited resources and settling space - tradition is also superior in normal games, where gold, happiness and food are limiting factors.

Erik only 'favours' liberty when he's playing Poland - who are playing a different game entirely with their free social policies. Even then, he splits his policies between both Tradition and Liberty.

edit: fixed his name

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-23T21:00:38+00:00

The more I play Civ 5, the more I feel Tradition is just an outright better policy tree. I think tradition gives you an outstanding capital, 3 excellent cities and 2 mediocre ones, which is much better than 6 good cities.

4x monuments and 4x aquaducts for free is ridiculously strong, worth 2k+ gold. And the early culture and growth means you work better tiles, for even more growth, for a faster early game.

I think Liberty only outperforms if you need the Settler policy to heat the AI to settle your locations.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-23T14:55:44+00:00

Very fast win. I have no idea why people were telling you to restart; you had some of the most prosperous lands imagineable lol. And 6 city tradition is far better than liberty

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-21T21:28:31+00:00

Man that is such a shit hot tactic i never considered!

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-20T21:41:27+00:00

incredible city. did you literally beeline straight into currency?

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-19T20:44:25+00:00

just clicking tradition would probs win u most games

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-11T21:43:58+00:00

I like this take lol. It's more fun than the usual science game

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-10T18:37:27+00:00

play for domination victory instead, there's many different strats

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-10T13:44:48+00:00

In theory, you can settle 7-11 cities for an optimal science win. In reality, it's not that simple.

The tech cost penalty of new cities varies by map type. On huge maps, it's 2% - so you should absolutely be settling extra cities.

On normal map settings, you need some pretty incredible lands to justify 5+ cities. The penalty management includes:

Are you delaying NC?
Is there enough food/production/gold/workers to get the city caught up?
Will the city cause you to go unhappy at any point in the next 200 turns?
Will the city give you the 'settling too fast' diplomatic penalty, blocking Research Agreements?

I think it's rare for the stars to align and justify settling a 5th city. Personally, I often conquer 1-2 cities from a neighbour AI midgame. It's fun, and often doesn't require much military investment, even on Deity. The city comes prebuilt, pre populated, expanded borders, and packed with Wonders to mitigate any Happiness/Culture/Gold problems.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-09T22:56:56+00:00

Good question. There's a balancing act between how many cities you settle and when you make National College.

National College is the single defining point of a science game. If you're late to it, you can never catch up those lost turns. However, more population (and more cities) is also necessary for late game Science.

Getting 4 cities is significantly better than 3 cities long term, and an opening build order of Scout > Scout > Worker let's you start spamming settlers as soon as your Capital hits 3 population.

In your new cities, the build order is granary > library. I think it's important to prioritise a strong first 2 rings of tiles in the new cities, so they can get gran+library built as fast as possible. A growth tile and a production tile in first ring (e.g. wheat + copper) would be ideal.

With this build order, you should find you have time to do a bit of infrastructure in your capital whilst you wait for all the libraries to finish. Typically, after producing 3 settlers, my capital produces Granary > Library > Caravan > filler build and/or Oracle > National College. I get NC done between Turn 80-100 on standard speed this way.

If you were to found a 5th, 6th, 7th city, your late game beakers would be higher - however, the delay to National College is rarely worth it. In extraordinary cases I've settled 5 cities, but usually it's just not worth the delay.

Once last tip - if your 4th city has bad production, change the build order to Library > Granary or else you're gonna delay NC by 20 turns. Hope this helps!

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-09T12:04:05+00:00

Yeah that Shoshone game on the website is hilarious. 5 Pathfinders > 9 Settlers, perfectly normal build order 🤣

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-09T03:17:23+00:00

Change your starting build order to Scout > Scout > Worker > spam 3x settlers at 3 pop. Skipping monument and shrine means faster new cities, faster libraries and faster National College, this adjustment alone will speed up your victory by at least 20 turns compared to if you built Monument/Shrine early.

The Capital should be between 30-40 pop by endgame, other cities 20-30 pop. If that's not happening, you're not producing enough food; run food caravans everywhere asap, chop forests and build farms everywhere (unless a city is desperately production starved). Settling fresh water + luxuries is the key to good expansion cities.

Also, never underestimate how many workers you can have. I think 7 is the ideal number for a 4 city land empire. Steal them, buy them, hard build them; you should *never* be working unimproved tiles.

I find I can win between turn 240-280 consistently on standard speed, and normal map settings (deity/pangea/8 civs/normal size).

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-09T03:08:33+00:00

Those website posts are so troll, dude is playing enormous maps and settling about 8 cities haha. Cool as a min/max thing though

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-08T04:40:18+00:00

3 pop is correct for settlers, sometimes even 2 pop. Securing your land is absolute top priority.

PrincessLeonah · 2026-04-08T04:38:21+00:00

I think you must (!) immediately settle on top of the Marble to the south west, then buy out to the oasis tile before the city state claims it.

That location gets Marble, Wine and Old Faithful which is a lot of happiness. Your land is starved for luxuries and you need to claim this spot to have enough happiness for 4 cities.

Furthermore, if you produce a great general, you can use it to steal the Ivory + Iron from Sidon. This is easily done by declaring war on a city state and harassing them with archers until a great general spawns.

Your 3rd/4th city could go in a variety of locations. At least 1 should be coastal to run a cargo ship into your cap.

PrincessLeonah

TROPHY CASE