Humankind - the Civ killer?

[Josephus]

Huns are killing me. Even after they switched to being Aztecs. And then Poles.

That's kind of the weird thing in this game. I'm at war with the Huns one turn, the Aztecs another.

[Syt]

I wish they would at least add the name of the opponent somewhere, so you have more of a fixed point of reference.

[FunkMonk]

They should let the player name the empires every game.

[Syt]

I've only played a couple hours so far. Still on my first game, and getting my butt kicked as Mayans by the Huns. I have no access to copper, but I will have iron in a few turns. This is on second lowest difficulty, btw.

I'm mostly struggling to focus enough to learn the game which is a bit frustrating. I will keep plinking away at it, though.

[crazy canuck]

They should let the player name the empires every game.

You can identify the AI opponent by the colour of their banner and also their Avatar.  You can go into the AI settings to select which of the avatars you want to play against, they all have different attributes. Their current civilization, as you pointed out, is not a very meaningful way of identifying them.

[crazy canuck]

I've only played a couple hours so far. Still on my first game, and getting my butt kicked as Mayans by the Huns. I have no access to copper, but I will have iron in a few turns. This is on second lowest difficulty, btw.

I'm mostly struggling to focus enough to learn the game which is a bit frustrating. I will keep plinking away at it, though.

Try using the diplomacy part of the game a bit more, there are a lot of ways to deal with a neighbour other than fighting with them, even in the early game - another of the big differences with the CIV franchise where you really want to try to take out the first neighouring civ asap.  Not so much in this game.

[Syt]

Well, the Huns have/had no grievances against me, and vice versa. We had full trade going and a non-aggression treaty, but they renounced them all and attacked me. The only option to resolve the war is for me to surrender. White Peace is not an option, because no grievances according to the tool tip.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah the Huns can be real pricks in this game. The only way to deal with them is to beat their asses in a war. After you do that they get all sulky 

[The Brain]

The Kaiser is such a loser.

[crazy canuck]

Some things I have learned about the first three ages:

1) it is better to stay in the first era until you have gathered 10 curiosities. Once you get that you will get to choose a buff that you carry for the rest of the game.
2) The excess units you create during the first era can be disbanded into your first city in order to increase the population.  You can do that with all units but with the starting units it is a free pop boost.
3) the trading system is completely different from CIV, you are not trading the good itself but access to the extractor.  All nations can gain access to the same extractor site - for a price. 
4) use your early money to buy trade routes for the luxury and strategic goods you need - ie don't use that money to speed production.  The buffs you gets from purchasing trade routes for goods you do not produce yourself are better.
5) Build your outposts with 3 and 4 in mind.  It is better to be the owner of the goods that everyone wants forcing them to trade for them.  That reduces their aggression toward you.  If you have a trade imbalance in their favour their aggression goes up - The AI sees you are dependent and will exact a demand for that sort of one side access.
6) Be very careful about who you pick fights with.  buying an early non aggression pact with a militarily inclined close neighbour can save you a lot of grief - follow it up with trading to allow them to purchase trade routes with you and your worst nightmare just became your best protector.  you can then take on others on the continent with a bit more confidence - or just befriend them all and expand to other islands and continents that might still be empty.
7) try to develop two cities before building more outposts - that might not be possible since it might take some searching to find a viable spot for the second city.  But if you can do it immediately that will help a lot.

[Josephus]

Some things I have learned about the first three ages:

1) it is better to stay in the first era until you have gathered 10 curiosities. Once you get that you will get to choose a buff that you carry for the rest of the game.
2) The excess units you create during the first era can be disbanded into your first city in order to increase the population.  You can do that with all units but with the starting units it is a free pop boost.
3) the trading system is completely different from CIV, you are not trading the good itself but access to the extractor.  All nations can gain access to the same extractor site - for a price. 
4) use your early money to buy trade routes for the luxury and strategic goods you need - ie don't use that money to speed production.  The buffs you gets from purchasing trade routes for goods you do not produce yourself are better.
5) Build your outposts with 3 and 4 in mind.  It is better to be the owner of the goods that everyone wants forcing them to trade for them.  That reduces their aggression toward you.  If you have a trade imbalance in their favour their aggression goes up - The AI sees you are dependent and will exact a demand for that sort of one side access.
6) Be very careful about who you pick fights with.  buying an early non aggression pact with a militarily inclined close neighbour can save you a lot of grief - follow it up with trading to allow them to purchase trade routes with you and your worst nightmare just became your best protector.  you can then take on others on the continent with a bit more confidence - or just befriend them all and expand to other islands and continents that might still be empty.
7) try to develop two cities before building more outposts - that might not be possible since it might take some searching to find a viable spot for the second city.  But if you can do it immediately that will help a lot.

Yeah that all sounds good.

RE: Number seven though. My strategy in the first two games I've played has been to develop two cities quickly, but I'm noticing that the AI grabs land quickly and I get boxed in. I'm thinking for my next game to just plop outposts everywhere I can and then start making cities and annexing the outposts.

I'm also having a problem with culture...seems like my neighbours are always effecting the culture on my cities. I'm not sure what happens there, but I need to prevent it.

And no idea what I'm doing with faith. In fact, I'm ignoring that for now.

[Grey Fox]

WASD movement is so slow. Really dampers my enjoyment of the map.

[Josephus]

So I'm at turn 200 or so and one Civ reached the top culture, I'm still at Culture two 


I found in both my games there's always one Civ that dominates.

[crazy canuck]

RE: Number seven though. My strategy in the first two games I've played has been to develop two cities quickly, but I'm noticing that the AI grabs land quickly and I get boxed in. I'm thinking for my next game to just plop outposts everywhere I can and then start making cities and annexing the outposts.

I'm also having a problem with culture...seems like my neighbours are always effecting the culture on my cities. I'm not sure what happens there, but I need to prevent it.

And no idea what I'm doing with faith. In fact, I'm ignoring that for now.

I tried the strategy of grabbing all the outposts I could in my first game.  What I learned is how well balanced the game is.  If you go with the land rush option there is a large premium and significant opportunity costs.  First, the premium side - the cost of establishing an outpost is based on the number of territories between the outpost and one of your cities, and the total number of territories you control.  The cost of establishing an outpost quickly gets close the the cost of establishing that second city.  Now for the real kicker - the opportunity cost.  Cities are where you generate the culture (stars) that are used to purchase the society choices (and their passive bonuses), the fame you get for generating culture, and the cost of putting an outpost on new territories/creating new cities. 

With only one city I found I was falling way behind cultural generation and because I was spending the few points I was generating on outposts, I could not expand my capital or purchase the society choices.  It was a disaster.

The other problem with land rushing is when you build an outpost next to another players territory, they get a claim on you.  Same works the other way.  So there is an additional cost benefit analysis - is it going to be worth pissing off the militaristic AI player just to stake a claim an a territory adjacent to them?  If it has a bunch of resources, maybe.  If not, likely not.

The important thing to realize is you are always going to get boxed in.  This in not CIV where you need to spam cities.  Nor do you need to have contiguous territories.  Rather you need to have well placed cities that give you control over luxury and strategic nodes.  Your capital is going to be your largest city because it gets the stability bonus and each attached territory is a stability hit.  Your other cities are not going to have many territories attached - unless you get lucky and get natural wonders in their boundaries, allowing you to attach more before you need to worry about the stability hit.

And don't forget about sea exploration - I just had a great game where I found a new continent before the others.  It had hostile independent cities but also some land where I could create a two new three territory cities before taking on the independents.

Lastly, also don't forget about the tech you will develop that lets new cities have all of the improvements of the proceeding tech ages.  That is huge - so save the development of some cities until you reach that tech.

I love how well balanced this game is.  There is not the kind of snowballing that occurs in CIV, there are always a number of factors to balance.

So I'm at turn 200 or so and one Civ reached the top culture, I'm still at Culture two 


I found in both my games there's always one Civ that dominates.

Don't worry too much about where you are in relation to AI players in the eras.  I found the AI speeds through the eras as quickly as possible.  But that means it is also forgoing fame that it might have earned if it stayed a bit longer before moving up.  Also there is a catchup mechanism that gives all other players stars based on the number of players in advance eras.  In the game I just won I was always a bit behind the leading two AI players but once I got to the last era I easily passed them in fame because I had spent some time getting the reasonably attainable extra fame.  Once again it is all about trade offs.  You only have 300 turns so you can't wait to get every star in every era.  But trying if you are close to getting more fame it is better to delay jumping up in order to collect the fame from that era.  The other thing to think about is building all the civ specific buildings - in each territory of each city you have before jumping up.  Each of those gives cultural boosts along with all the other bonuses.

[crazy canuck]

WASD movement is so slow. Really dampers my enjoyment of the map.

You can change the speed.