Okay, I can put up with all the bullshit and shortcomings of this game, and even enjoy it

Civ 4 was better in every aspect except warfare

Happiness, tech tree, religion, buildings, unit trees, aims to make every Civ playable, comes with a sweet map generator. It's pretty much an overhaul of the game. Not sure if an actual 4x player could weigh in, considering they'd probably tell you to play Victoria or Alpha Centari.

Civ V is a 4X game
Also it's the most retarded, least descriptive name for a genre ever

But some day a liberty, piety route will work. IT MUST

Yeah, it only works when your capital is on a hill/river/mountain/coast tile and you have at least 3 salt resources and get first religion

Civ 5 only has "better" combat if you're playing against an unskilled and totally linear opponent, like the AI. Kind of like how playing checkers is more fun than chess if you're up against a simulation of a three-year-old.

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>She does it again

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You mean Autocracy?

Also I don't really understand how the ideological unhappiness works. The tooltip states -1 per 10 population or something or whatever is greater, but it seems inconsistent between each civilization I hover over. I assume it has to do with tourism, but it's never really been a big problem for me

every time i play this i just build 3-4 cities and turtle the entire game, while focusing all on tech.

i get tech victory every time.

I play on difficulty 6; I used to play on vanilla, but I got bored so I have a few mods to make the game more interesting.

I grabbed Really Advanced Setup so you can adjust starting locations. I usually give everyone (including AI) a Scout replacing the warrior, and one free tech (on this difficulty AI ends up getting two), as well as having a vision of 5. Another mod allows Scouts to enter enemy territory since they're fucking scouts.

It makes it a lot more fluid to have interesting starts. For example, I usually get Pottery and immediately start to build a Shrine. In Vanilla, the optimal strategy was usually 2x Scout 2x Settler with Tradition.

In any case, 4 cities is usually the optimal choice because of how strong Tradition is (as well as how happiness works). Still, getting City States as your allies is incredibly strong, especially because of the bonus culture/turn.

I know how to avoid pissing off non-warmonger/backstabbing AI, so I also just kind of go pure economy. Usually, I go full Tradition, get Patronage's Scholasticism, and then go for Rationalism's Secularism. By then, it's time to pick either Order or Freedom depending on my victory path. I usually win by diplomacy because again, City State bonuses are just so overwhelming, especially when you get bonus science and start to snowball. All you have to do is buy alliances with them all, sit on your hands for a few turns, research Globalism, and dump your spies diplomats into AI capitals, and you'll win within 1 or 2 voting cycles. Much faster than science, imo.

Apparently one of the fastest wins is to found a religion and get two of Pagoda>Mosque>Monastery>Cathedral, then reform to get tourism. You just shit out cities as fast as possible, because each one is worth +4 tourism, and you only take -3 happiness per city (because the local happiness from these structures will offset up to 4 pop). I believe that you research hard science exclusively, and try to do coastal cities with trade routes to give food to your capital, for faster science gain. Some user said he won by Tourism during the Renaissance

how do i download the 1.0.3.279 patch for the rated-ARRR version?

I miss this strategy.

I missed the good old days when you can out-tech your opponents to ludicrous degrees.

Seeing mechanized infantry mow down spearman never got old for me.

Pee pee
Doo doo
Civ5 is a bad game

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bump

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I remember when I hadn't even developed electricity back in Civ 1 when someone approached one of my cities with a tank.
I rushed a diplomat and spend all my cash to buy the unit. While I concentrated my efforts in stealing more techs (spamming "diplomats") I used the tank to fuck the shit of my low-tech neighbors.

How is one supposed to focus the great people generation in civ4?
I know that you can always throttle this in the city-screen, and the wonders adds some bonuses, but still it's a pain the ass to micromanage this, considering how useful are each of them separately (I usually just make them sleep eternally and wake them up when I'm making corporations)

I feel like the only way to really succeed in this game is focus on tech and steamroll anyone who fucks with you. Different playstyles are fun, but tech is always superior.

In civ4 if you focused 100% in tech, your neighbours would bully you and invade you. You could rush something to defend yourself but not to attack the invader's cities. In the end you had to dedicate some effort in making some defense troops in advance just to disuade other nations from invading you (i.e. troops you'll never use).

I always just turtle up and go through tech as fast as possible. I just can't bring myself to waste resources on some soldiers when I could use it on buildings

This in a nutshell.
My brother called my a coward and was always trying rushing everyone.
I don't believe he ever got a spaceship victory
(and then, I rarely get any kind of Military victory).

If you want to go military, use the Huns and rush everyone. Unless you're playing on immortal/deity, you can probably wipe out 8 civs before horse archers become too weak.

I always catch myself wondering why the fuck none of the developers ever thought to go with a medium between One Unit Per Tile… or INFINITE UNITS PER TILE!!!

I mean, if you want to do it right you could consider the physical size and strength of each unit and "weight" them appropriately. So you can put 5 infantry on one tile but only 2 tanks, or a combination like 1 tank and 2 infantry. Put ranged and scouting units and generals in different classes so you can't have a "stack" of 20 infantry on a single tile, but you could have 5 infantry, 2 scouts, a general, and 1 artillery on a single tile.

Even if you cheaped out entirely and just raised the limit to some arbitrary number like "5 of anything per tile" it would be better than BOTH one-unit-per-tile and stacks-of-doom.

It does.
It's called Infinite City Sprawl. You utilize the Mayans Pyramid, which replaces the shrine, to give you +2 science and +2 faith (double faith of what a shrine normally gives). Then you proceed to build cities as close together as possible (3 tiles away so their borders will overlap) and take the Messenger of the Gods Pantheon which gives an additional 2 science per city connection, for a total of 4 science per city with a road and pyramid. Remember to limit the growth of every city that isn't your capital so they don't grow past three, you'll still pick up all the resources and you won't get slapped with happiness penalties.
Your Founder Belief should be a per-city benefit (Church Rites, Ceremonial Burial, Pilgrimage) and your follower beliefs should be Mosques and Pagodas (if still available). They feed into the religion machine that you have created and provide culture to unlock more policies. Use these extra policies to get Piety/Rationalism.
Since you have so many cities, Itinerant Preachers as your Enhancer belief is bullshit overpowered, getting up to 120+ pressure on nearby cities. Use your reformation belief on something that allows you to turn all this faith you have building into power, so Jesuit Teachings (science), Religious Fervour (war), Sacred Sites (tourism) or To the Glory of God (any).

That's true, you need at least a competent army. Military oriented games are fun at first, but once you've dealt with your main competitors it's gets repetitive dealing cleaning everyone else up.

Galactic Civilizations does this, there's a cap to how much stuff you can put in a fleet (stack) called logistics, different sized ships have different logistics costs.