Civ V Civilization Analysis I

The Setup

Game Speed: Standard*

Map: Huge Continents

Resources: Strategic Balance

Players: 12

City States: 28

*I generally preferred epic in Civ 4 and usually in Civ 5 but I use standard for this article with the assumption that it is the most balanced in Civilization V. The major differences in balance for epic in Civ V is that unique units and buildings are more effective since their particular era is longer; this also means civ with later unique units and buildings are somewhat at a disadvantage in earlier periods. It's also more costly to lose your army in a war because it takes longer to recover if you lose all your units since everything takes longer to build. Unfortunately the atrocious AI of Civ 5 is also even more horrible on epic because of the latter point.

Ghandi - Initial Thoughts

Ghandi is a bit different in Civilization 5 than he was in Civilization IV since now he is given abilities to encourage builder play (though I think it fails to do so) as usual, but he actually has a proper unique combat unit instead of a fast worker.

The first thing that came to mind when looking at Ghandi's unique ability in Civ V is that he's meant to have a few very large cities and maybe go for a culture or space victory, but we'll come back to that.

The Indian unique unit War Elephant is a very good ancient-era replacement for the chariot archer.

It's a bit more expensive to build and has one less movement, but it has better strength and ranged attack strength. The lower movement isn't actually noticeable if the map has a lot of rough terrain; however, it does hurt the unit a lot on open terrain maps. The Mughal fort is a great building as well. it provides more defense than the castle that it replaces, provides some culture to help cover culture growth while your expanding, provides gold later in the game, and it does all this with the same maintenance and is a bit cheaper than the castle, excellent.

Ghandi - Gameplay

With Ghandi I decided to try expanding aggressively so I made a pair of scouts and my first policy was

liberty. I spent most of this part of the game pumping settlers, settling along the river, and impressing city states.

For the most, part I ended up ignoring diplomacy with most major civilization besides the occasional research pact.

I took advantage of my war elephants and conquered as many city-states as I could before they banned together against me. I went to war with Caesar twice over him attacking one of my allied city-states. I left him with a single city and turned on Wu Zetian. This war was going very well when Washington declared war on my southern cities which I ended up losing three or four of at first. It took a while for me to formulate a response because Washington outnumbered what I had in the area, and most of my army was half the map to the east teaching the Chinese the art of war. There were at least a few cities that I think were saved by the Mughal forts that I had been constructing to keep my culture up as I expanded.

Eventually, I decided to go for a diplomatic victory when it was down to myself, Bismark, Hiawatha and 3-5 city states whom I was allied with (I went liberty, honor, patronage, autocracy).

Ghandi - Thoughts

If you were thinking that Ghandi's unique ability in Civ 5 makes aggressive expansion counter-intuitive you'd actually be wrong; now either I've misread the intent of what Firaxis imagined how Ghandi's ability would affect the way you play the game in Civ V or they simply didn't notice it didn't work the way they intended. Normally, in Civilization 5, you gain two unhappiness per pop and 1 per city while Ghandi makes this two unhappiness per city and one per pop. For everyone, a new city with one pop will be three unhappiness, but at two population everyone other than Ghandi will have a five unhappiness city while Ghandi gets away with a four unhappiness city. This overall lower unhappiness keeps getting better as population grows higher. Add this with the extra culture Ghandi produces per city, from the Mughal Fort, to fight off that fifteen percent penalty per city and you have a master of expanding.

Ghandi - Build Ideas

Aggressive Ghandi - Take honor and expand aggressively by conquering cities in the early game with your war elephants. Early on mostly make puppets states with an eye to convert them into occupied cities one at a time when you get access to courthouses. Spam Mughal forts to keep the policies coming in and go for a domination or diplomatic victory when you're the leading civ in the late game.

Caste Ghandi - Take liberty and settle as much as you can while avoiding wars. Use war elephants to easily control the barbarian population in your area; focus on food, and keep your happiness up so your cities grow to a large size. Later, take the freedom line and make heavy use of specialists while your overall goal is a victory by culture, spaceship, or score.

Napoleon - Initial Thoughts

Napoleon's France is quite a bit different in Civ V than it has been in earlier incarnations as well. The first major difference is Musketeers. In both Civ 3 and Civilization IV musketeers were the normal musket units with one more point of movement which was pretty huge but didn't really make them more effective in combat. In Civ 5, whereas it would have made them amazing in to have an additional move because of the changes to the combat system; they were instead given four more points of strength. This is actually pretty big because four strength can mean the difference between surviving getting attacked or ranged attacked. Overall, the musketeer I think is more aggressive than previous incarnations. The other thing is that the usually "industrious" French now have a culture type unique bonus, but it ends up fitting in well with their new

aggressive style.

The first thing that Napoleons makes me think is culture victory. I would find out; however. that this wasn't so much the case. When you consider the amount of culture it takes to win a culture victory, you find that two per city makes for a very small portion of the culture per turn that you have to be producing to complete five trees and have enough time to finish the wonder by the last turn. In the end his unique ability is more suited to keep the policies coming in at a reasonable rate while you expand which is a good thing since his unique units the Musketeer and Foreign Legion are strong military units spanning two eras back to back.

Napoleon - Gameplay

In this game, I actually wanted to test out how strong coastal cities with harbors would be with trade which ended up having mixed results; I ended up with very low production totals which made my war efforts later some what annoying, but due to the strength of Napoleons unique units, ended up making great progress.

I took a point in liberty early on for the bonus to settlers then filled out the honor tree. Eventually I would fill up Honor, liberty, piety, and commerce and would use all the bonuses to keep my massive empire happy and productive. I expanded to about eight cities along the coast before I ran out of room and started expanding down the two rivers in my territory. I had rocky relations with the Songhai which eventually led to them declaring war on me. I managed to push them back and claim a city, and as I was starting to mass outside their capital he asked me for peace offering seven of his cities, gold, gold per turn, and every resource he had. I had to take such a sweet deal, but afterwards when my unhappiness reached livid, I really ended up paying for the massive loss in my already terrible production. By the end of this war, myself, Bismark and Nobunaga were the top dogs on my continent, with Bismark having grown absolutely huge. Bismark asked me to go back to war on Askia with him, and so I did. Bismark claimed about five cities while I took his very well developed capital that had a few wonders in it.

After Askia was eliminated from the game, All was quiet for a while. Bismark would end up declaring war on me shortly after I gained the ability to build musketeers which would cost him dearly. That extra four strength musketeers have over musketmen is a pretty big deal allowing me to preserve my army, when otherwise, they may take that extra point of damage that would later cause them to die. I pretty much absorbed all twenty something of bismarks cities; making me master of the entire continent. This of course made Nobunaga pretty annoyed with me, but he was so far behind militarily he didn't dare bother me.

By the time I had conquered Germany and gained control of the continent, I discovered the master of the other continent: Suleiman. He beat me on score and was first in everything that mattered. To make matters worse, he was ahead of me in military tech by about an era, that is, he was at the end of industrial when I had just entered it. I determined that war with him would be pretty rough that way, and started gearing up for a diplomatic victory. Luckily, since he was on the other continent making him my best friend forever wasn't hard, and I ended up getting his vote with the other city-states that were left over.

Napoleon - Thoughts

In this game, I didn't really play Napoleon like he should have been played on account of testing out the usefulness of harbors in addition to not having a clear idea of where he stood in gameplay. His two unique units are very powerful in their respective eras. The musketeer is great because having a more powerful core-unit (warriors, swordsmen, long swordsmen, musketeers etc.) is nice; especially considering that the musketeer is cheap on production just like the musketman, and it fills an especially strong niche during the renaissance era. The Foreign Legion unit is exactly the same as infantry in every way except that it gains a twenty percent bonus outside your own borders; this makes them a very aggressive unit and very good for taking cities. Twenty percent is something like seven strength making it far and beyond normal infantry which it replaces.

Napoleon - Build Ideas

I really only have one idea for Napoleon. Expand aggressively, liberty or not doesn't matter since your not aiming to get too spectacular early on and you have plenty of time to develop without liberty; I'd take liberty in any situation where the map and Civ setup would put me in the position of an early land grab; otherwise, I'd put it into honor, maybe patronage, and save the rest for filling out autocracy as soon as you get it. You're just building your economy in preparation to sweep people in the renaissance and industrial with musketeers and foreign legion.

Next article: I'll look at what may possibly be my two favorite Civs in Civ V: Chinese and Greeks.

The Chinese have an amazing unique unit and unique building while Wu Zetian looks to have a unique ability that isn't too shabby either.

The Greeks have possibly the best set of early unique units and Alexander very easily controls the city-states of the game.

If you're interested in my overall thoughts of the game, please check out my Civ V review article included in the links in the article.