A guide to help you all beat the early game in Civ 5 The key to almost every super fast victory time is to have a kick-ass early game, so in this video I share my best tips on how to get it done! Hope you find this helpful :)
Thanks for the guide, it's clear and straight forward. I have a question though: isn't it important to build your capital on a hill to get that second hammer?
I have been playing civilization since civ 3 when I was a teenager, I'm 35 now. I have NEVER beaten any civ game on Diety (yeah I just suck). BUT, after having watched this video and the one you made on the easiest types of victories, I learned exactly what I needed to get the job done, and I JUST NOW beat the game on diety. You really changed the game for me dude thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the feedback! You make a great point about the vods. I've always seen the guide videos as the RUclips-friendly content and then the vods if you want to hang out and watch me actually play the game. I can't afford the time for guides, RUclips-edited Let's Plays and streaming, so the YT Let's Plays had to drop out. Sadly I've done a pretty bad job of uploading a regular RUclips-friendly guide schedule, but I'm trying to change that!
Haven't won on Deity yet, but it has helped me enormously to get my cities up and running quickly. Looking forward to beating the game on Deity one day.
These tips are deadly. I started a Poland game last night and followed this to the letter. Had a 4-city National College by turn 82 on Emperor, which is incredible for me. Thanks for the tips!
Awesome - great job! It's actually natural for some timings to be a bit slower than they would be on Deity, because the AI getting luxuries online is a big deal. Keep concentrating on that growth, workers and early build order choices and you'll get there soon enough!
@@PCJLaw Thanks for the feedback. The biggest difference was building all 3 settlers back to back. Not deviating with archers, buildings, etc. keeps you focused and sets you up for early success with the new expansion. Love it!
Thanks for sharing this info! Never having beaten civ5 on Immortal or Deity, I followed your advice from this video series and managed to win on Deity for the first time ever! I used Darius and won on turn 210. It was my first try after watching through this video series. Many thanks!
Thank you so much for this guide! I think it is the best Civ V tutorial I’ve found on RUclips. Very well organized and presented. Loved having the slides spelling it out as I’m a visual learner. And best of all I can testify it works as I just won my first Deity game since I started back playing Civ V, despite multiple wars from AI’s.
big thanks for the vids, PCJL! I watched 3 or 4 of these in the past few days while going for my first Deity win (and no mods so I could get the achievement) in a decade of playing, and I finally broke through with Babylon tonight. very satisfying! though I'm so fortunate that among many other lucky breaks, Mongolia (who had >50% of the map game score) also chose Order and seemed to back off after I built air defenses. your tip about paying enemy civs to fight each other was the CLUTCH advice for me.
Summary: - The most important thing is to prioritize growing your city to population 3. Settle your first city immediately. Once your city reaches population 3, it's time to move to settle other cities. - Scout for the location of your cities. Choose tradition. Settle 4-5 cities depending on the number of unique luxuries you have (generally 1 city per luxury). - Use your two scouts and your warrior to protect your settlers while they travel to their designated spots. - Aim for 3 food tiles per city to allow your cities to grow quickly. - How many workers do I need?: Two times the number of cities you have minus one. - Make sure you have enough happiness to keep cities growing. Again, tradition is a good social policy because it provides happiness bonuses. Build entertainment complexes like circuses and coliseums to generate more happiness.
Yeah what does everybody do when suddenly out of the blue another power which has shown absolutely no signs of aggression marches an unstoppable army to destroy you and you don't even have your third city built?
I use the relationship factors to guide me. Scrolling over the qualifier of their relationship to me (neutral, friendly, guarded...) I can see things like "they covet your lands" or "THEY COVET YOUR LANDS". In this video they mentioned paying a civ to go to war with another civ. I guess you can maintain a dialogue with them and see how much they want from you for going to war with another civ. The more ready they are for war, the more willing there are going to be to take a bribe to war someone else.
Thanks PC. You're an expert of the game and an expert at explaining the game... rare combination! Just so I'm clear, are you switching cities to production focus as soon as they are founded? Or do you wait until pop 3?
Thank you for the very kind feedback! There's 2 types of production focus which is where the confusion comes from (I didn't explain it in the video, so my bad) 😅 1 - Production focus trick. This is the trick where you set your city to any other focus setting as long as it's not food, to exploit the way yields are given to you when the city grows. Commonly, you would set production focus because production is the most important yield in the early game. See this guide video of mine, where one of the tips is the explanation of this trick: Top Deity Tips: ruclips.net/video/BE0M11HRV0k/видео.html 2 - Production focusing when producing settlers or when it's pointless to grow anymore. It's super easy to grow to pop 3. It's much harder to grow to pop 4. When your growth rate is bad it's almost always better to production focus until you can improve it. You can't grow when producing settlers so that's an obvious time to production focus. Similarly growing from pop 3 onwards when you haven't got 2 of the 3 growth factors I outlined in section 5 is pretty slow, so you might as well production focus again I tick production focus when I found the city for the purposes of (1), however I will manually lock in food focus. I then actually production focus when I hit pop 3, except in the rare occasion when growing to pop 4 before settlers makes sense
I was about to comment that "I need to write this down my memory sucks" and I noticed you have a pdf of the instructions in the description. You Sir are a god!
I enjoyed this video. I had a couple of questions though that may be beyond the scope of this video or maybe not. Mainly regarding military. Any time I build Settler x3, the AIs get upset that I'm expanding so quickly and attack me. With just a warrior, I cannot react to that. Then, once the cities are established, how do you defend them? Barbarians like to pillage my tile improvements and with just 1 Warrior, it's an uphill battle.
Hi , I usually don't write comments, but your guide is really good, specially because of your slides with written instruction, seems like a real classroom. Tx, cheers from Brazil.
It's ironic how I played civ5 instead of paying attention in all of my college classes; because now I feel like I'm taking a college class on civ5, and I feel like I'm gonna fail the test.
Dude, you have two natural wonders and one of them is Uluru. It is obvious that you as Zulu should have picked one with nature sand get +8 faith in total from Uluru city and Eldorado.
Great videos J Law! Perhaps you might do a "When to bail out video?" I find myself bailing out at turn 0 a lot because the starting position seems pretty horrible. I bail out when I get warred early and I don't see a clear way to survive. Later in the game though it's not so obvious that all is lost. The game takes so long to play, it would be really helpful to recognize early when there's no point in going on. Thank you.
THIS! Today alone, I bailed on 5 different games before turn 50 because I was worried I'd lose in the long run. I think I should just admit I suck at Civ 5 deity. lol But it would be nice to know what the signs are that I'm off to a bad start. For instance, in almost all my games, the deciding factor that made me quit was that the city-states were either too far away, or were not making workers that I could steal.
The only problem with this guide is that you are completely at the mercy of your neighbors. You have no military whatsoever and haven't even built walls anywhere. An early war would completely ruin you. It seems a little bit disingenuous to end the video where you did, because that Polish carpet of doom is about to completely destroy you. Best case scenario, you "only" lose the two cities North of your capital before you can peace out. Worst case scenario, Poland and America joint-war you and you get wiped by Minutemen attacking cities with 13 combat strength. That being said, if you start next to Shaka, Alex, Attila, or even Monty on Deity, you might as well restart.
Thanks. That was interesting. So different from the way I usually play the game. I usually never made internal trade routes because the game suggested that it subtracts the value from the origin city which would mean there is no real gain. However that is just a false info the game gives you as I just researched. I usually went for money trade routes and bought the granaries.
Thank you! This content is so informative and your presentation style is so clear! I do have a question about the early game- which pantheons do you recommend? I imagine that this is circumstantial but do you have any generalizable advice? Thank you!
i love your advice but sometimes if eel like getting even four cities on immortal/deity is hard, because city states/the AI claim all the spots before you. esp if you have insane forwad settler AI like siam near you.
Good to see Civ 5 content. Currently playing; England > Large > Fractal > Deity > Epic Speed. It's a showdown now between myself and a huge Persia. Looks like I'm going to win. Looks like you play small maps normal speed. I think this is too easy. Try Deity on Large or huge maps, it's much harder.
The question I'm always stuck with is why aren't we settling on a Hill? I feel like I've started settling on hills a while ago, it just gives the +1 production vs not settling on the hill
man, i never seem to have good luck with my starts. an ai is always right nearby and has their 3 cities anywhere id like to go, and since they start off stronger, i get warred early and lose. that, and you end up with either a militaristic civ that will war you at the cost of not protecting city states or get stuck with a civ that protects all of the ones you find as your neighbor. even on this great looking salt start i fished for i just couldnt get it to work because monty decided that if i settled anywhere past the river he would take the city.
Your early game is amazing, In turn ~110-130 your science is always insane, I’m really studying your games and learned a lot, but it’s not easy, still my best SV is 204 on quick time and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong :/
Thanks for the compliment! For what it's worth, T204 quick speed is a very good turn time regardless! Hopefully you've learned some tricks from watching to put them into action? If I had to choose 2 things that make my early games what they are, it's Growth technique and worker number (tips 5 and 6). Growth matters much more than tech path or National College timing, and the difference "working all improved tiles" makes is huge. Is there something in the list you struggle with or are unsure about? I could perhaps offer some advice. If you're part of the Discord, a great idea would be to share a screenshot in #general-chat or #civ-5-ask-pcjlaw. Seeing your cities and your turn time I could give you a good guess at what you could do. A turn 100 quick speed (or T150 standard) screenshot usually tells a great deal about what went on in the early game Bear in mind I have T100 population benchmarks: 3 cities - 45 pop 4 cities - 50 pop 5 cities - 55 pop +5 pop for every additional city
@@PCJLaw thank you, I certainly will ask for evaluating my T100 games (immortal, quick), actually that's one thing I've learned from your videos is to benchmark at T100 empire to see if things went ok, and that's interesting what you said to put more effort for growth than in tech, which is probably what I'm doing wrong. Also, your build order, and especially timing when to build some things is essential I think. I won't mention your Inca liberty game, because it was exceptionally good, but f.e. your Korea game was outstanding IMO, and I've watched it few times actually to understand a bit more your thought process. Once again thank you for your time and sharing the knowledge, I think Civ 5 is having some renaissance era right now, as a civ 6 deity player I find civ 5 more entertaining, this game is aging very well, so it's good to see some high quality streams like yours. Peace!
@GiE audio Yeah the growth vs tech thing is interesting. The problem with it is, most of the advice on how to play Civ 5 comes from the earlier days of BNW. When I was first playing in 2015-2017, all that advice was already long-established. It took the community much longer to understand the growth snowball and how to do it, than to tech beeline, which was so much more formulaic but ultimately detrimental. You can thank the revitalised Chinese community, and the MP players in the post-Filthy era for figuring it out! The build order is pretty key I would agree, particularly the workers, trade routes and granary Thank you for the compliments on the games! I've improved quite a lot even since I first started the channel, because it's helped me rationalise the ideas in a consistent and repeatable format I do hope civ 5 is having a bit of a rennaisance but we'll see 😛
I will never understand how you avoid wars and win on higher difficulties. I've managed to win on emperor just once as highest difficulty, and I always struggle balancing expansion with military necessary to deter neighbors. And I still deal with wars a lot. How do you do this when you go up to immortal/deity? Is it just a lot of luck
Great video! Given that Poland will probably declare war in a few turns, how would you deal with it if you can't preemptively pay them to war someone else? I usually end up losing a city on deity between turns 70-90 because my focus on growth hasn't allowed me to build an army.
Good question! It seems like a cop out, but sometimes there's nothing you can do. In this empire's case, the choice to go to 5 cities instead of 4 is a high-risk, high-reward play. If it can avoid war until T100 it's hands-down the best choice. However, like with all wide(r) empires, it's super vulnerable to war between T50 and T100. The choice to go 5 cities determined the war vulnerability, rather than anything else. That said, losing one city is probably not the end of the world on this land. Going from 5 -> 4 is much less bad than going from 4 -> 3 or 3 -> 2. Sometimes the Deity AI will happily peace you for the rest of the game once you've lost one city, especially if you manage to make it last a few turns On stream I've had several examples of losing a city but still turning that into a win, but that only tends to work if you lose 1 city max, and you can stay with at least 3+ cities On top of this, you have to remember that Deity AI powerspike between roughly T60 and T120 (quick speed), there are some situations that even the best in the world cannot stop If I were to try and salvage this, it would be standary army composition. The key to war is to get hits off without taking hits. And for those units that take hits, to last for as many turns as possible. That's why FilthyRobot always used to refer to Melee units as "blocker units", because attacking with a melee unit speeds up it's death, so you fortify and block instead. You'd then want to tech xbows and attempt to defend with a balance of pikemen and comps/crossbowmen. If you can, you would also build a Walls in the city being attacked because it deals more damage back to "slamming" melee units, and resists ranged fire better (as well as dealing more of it's own damage) As I said, however, the choice to go 5 cities reduced the ability for this empire to war. 3 cities is optimal for war between T70 and T100. While more cities will increase your overall production, they will in general be behind in infrastructure, thus meaning they're less able to handle losing 15 turns to military production. The capital in particular takes the most punishment in that respect Sorry it's not the greatest of answers, but this is why paying for a war is always the best option. If there's an AI you don't think you'll convice to war it's better to squeeze a few military units in, instead of some vanity buildings (e.g. Shrines, Temples, Guilds, World Wonders)
Awesome, thanks for the response! I've been winning consistently on immortal since watching your videos and have recently begun trying deity. Haven't won yet, but will keep trying to get it!
Here's what stumps me with a lot of these guides: if you are going to grow at such a speed, and support 2 workers per city, how on Earth are you affording it? I'm chronically low on happiness and gold in the Classical Era, even with Meritocracy and all luxuries improved. In most of my playthroughs not using any caravans for gold and building a dozen workers would mean going into the red at least until I research Currency. I'm not even talking about maintaining the army. Just... how?
This works on a small\standard map for a science\peaceful victory where the AI's have terrain or border limits. On larger maps the AI's will spam 15+ cities each (all growing tall), snowball, and then stomp you. They WILL attack around turn 150 on standard bc their military strength is way higher. On a huge map what does your 4-5 tall city build with zero military do when Greece backstabs you then rushes with 20+ units? Have you beaten deity on domination? Let the AI build the cities and wonders for you then take them. You want 4 large core cities sure but will need a ton more to hold land and churn out units. And it's a totally different game trying to manage unit maintenance, city count, etc.
Although I do like the concept of Tradition for those core cities. I just think you're rolling the dice on if they rush you.. and they will on larger maps hands down.
Good question! There's actually a new unique luxury in there that's hidden by my face for most of the video (Marble) The only thing that matters is the number of good tiles in the city, not the number of bad tiles (although naturally more good tiles often means fewer bad tiles) Usually, 12-15 good tiles is all you need (tiles with 3+ yield once improved), but you can go as low as 10 if necessary. More cities is always better, so as long as I've got the happiness room I'll found one as long as there are enough decent tiles As for the copper city, there weren't enough food tiles left after I founded Nobabma. I placed it there because I thought it was a better city for having the Fish, Whales, Cattle and Iron, over whatever it got from being further South Any other city for the Copper would have been too close to Germany. Also, I founded Bulawayo for the map control to some degree. Leaving that wide open space is asking for barbarian nuisance, and the AI would just put an annoying city there later
I'm watching Deity guides to play on Immortal so i can completely destroy the AI. So far i've won only a couple of Immortal games (all sci victory) and i wonder, what sort of difficulty spike is there going from Immortal to Deity ? Because it was massive between emperor and immortal.
If they diety that means 2 things, u fcked sth up seriously and/or u like total war action and u r culture rushing montezuma:-) but yea this guide is controversial to Say The least
So how do you deal with AI invasions? I'm 1 and 5 on immortal level. I've gone with the four city strategy but got teamed up on by Rome and America on one, Impi rushed on another, and teamed again with Huns and Austria. This is happening consistently around turns 80-120. I'm usually getting rushed by anywhere from 8 to 15 units which a comp bow, spearman/ pikeman army can't handle. If I spend time on walls and units, I'm not "getting there fast enough". How do you beat this viscous cycle? Even friending a military city state doesn't get you units fast enough to match an invader.
Best way is to prevent war by bribing the AI's to fight each other as soon as you see their army heading towards you. even if they're right on your border as soon as you bribe them to go to war with another deity AI they will no longer declare on you for the duration of that war. Regardless I usually just build 3 archers (sometimes even 4-5 if england for example, because of longbowman later) and upgrade to composite bowman. use one melee unit as well. build city walls if the frontline city is exposed / has poor terrain that's not easy to defend (you want to avoid this, settle in places where you can defend more easily). i usually get declared at least once especially with aggressive AI's. composite bowmen + defendable location + walls and just let them send their carpet of doom into your city until they're all dead and settle for peace (though i try to keep going until i get my first great general).
When I tried this strategy I had several issues. It took a long time to get the national college, my faith took forever to get started, and my gold was negative so my science tanked. Do you lay down your settlers right away? They take alot of turns to build like 8 turns in the early game
Thanks for all the info! My favorite map is archipelago, and i had to do some minimal adjustements, since optics is needed sometimes more than other techs. Do you recommend anything in particular for this map? It's my favorite cause i prefer naval warfare for their mobility, sometimes in land maps, you have an army of elephants to cross hills and jungles :(
Some interesting points but you sometimes advise like it's solitaire and the AI has no interaction. I'm quite good at this game and the AI will 100% of the time be aggressive and attempt to destroy me regardless of what I do or how I approach. Let's not forget the ravenous barbarians that totally focus on you, ruining your units and scouts. By turn 20 I've had 6 barbarians attack me with the ottomans having chariots and Russians catapults all attemoting to invade even though both were "friendl." and trading with me. No mention of that here. 😂 🤦🏻♂️
Everytime I play on immortal - only 5 times so far- there are always opposing civs close to me. Usually at least 3. At the stage where you're building your first settler you have tonnes of space and no other civs. I'm usually meeting other civs on turn 5 at least. Standard map and standard speed. Any tips?
So in the start of the game once I have 2 scouts and a builder I should just focus my capital on just building settlers till I have about 4 cities? Then focus on granary for those cities and builder next? Meanwhile finishing the traditional tree only?
I pumped out 4 cities at 3 pop in my capital, everyone very unhappy, things take forever to pick up . while everyone else is easily double or triple my highest populated city, im improving unique luxuries just to get my happiness not red. Something doesnt seem to add up, will try again with 3 instead of 4 cities I guess. this strat also seems to only get a pantheon, by the time you get enough faith for a religion, they are all taken.
A guide to help you all beat the early game in Civ 5
The key to almost every super fast victory time is to have a kick-ass early game, so in this video I share my best tips on how to get it done!
Hope you find this helpful :)
I understood right that you always play on fast game speed?
Thanks for the guide, it's clear and straight forward.
I have a question though: isn't it important to build your capital on a hill to get that second hammer?
I have been playing civilization since civ 3 when I was a teenager, I'm 35 now. I have NEVER beaten any civ game on Diety (yeah I just suck). BUT, after having watched this video and the one you made on the easiest types of victories, I learned exactly what I needed to get the job done, and I JUST NOW beat the game on diety. You really changed the game for me dude thank you.
It's rare to find a guide this clear and useful
I' ve been trying to win deity for 2 years. With your tips, I managed it the same day I watched the video! Sincere thanks!!
Videos like these are great and more digestible compared to the tips within hour long vods. Thank you for the tips!
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the feedback!
You make a great point about the vods. I've always seen the guide videos as the RUclips-friendly content and then the vods if you want to hang out and watch me actually play the game. I can't afford the time for guides, RUclips-edited Let's Plays and streaming, so the YT Let's Plays had to drop out. Sadly I've done a pretty bad job of uploading a regular RUclips-friendly guide schedule, but I'm trying to change that!
Haven't won on Deity yet, but it has helped me enormously to get my cities up and running quickly.
Looking forward to beating the game on Deity one day.
Good luck! I hope these videos can be useful to you!
These tips are deadly. I started a Poland game last night and followed this to the letter. Had a 4-city National College by turn 82 on Emperor, which is incredible for me. Thanks for the tips!
Awesome - great job!
It's actually natural for some timings to be a bit slower than they would be on Deity, because the AI getting luxuries online is a big deal. Keep concentrating on that growth, workers and early build order choices and you'll get there soon enough!
@@PCJLaw Thanks for the feedback. The biggest difference was building all 3 settlers back to back. Not deviating with archers, buildings, etc. keeps you focused and sets you up for early success with the new expansion. Love it!
@@stewstyle Great - glad you noticed the difference!
Fresh civ content! Thank you for making these! Have over 1k hours in the game and still enjoy it after 8 years :)
Thanks for sharing this info!
Never having beaten civ5 on Immortal or Deity, I followed your advice from this video series and managed to win on Deity for the first time ever! I used Darius and won on turn 210. It was my first try after watching through this video series.
Many thanks!
quick speed?
@@antianime-pfp3291 Quick speed
So good to see you getting more and more confident at delivering information you know is helpful and solid. Thanks for the tips and the content bro
Thanks for the kind feedback! Glad to know you think I'm improving, and most importantly, glad you found it useful!
Best Civ V tutorials by FAR. Especially loved the typed up slides I could print screen. Thanks for all the advice!
Thank you so much for this guide! I think it is the best Civ V tutorial I’ve found on RUclips. Very well organized and presented. Loved having the slides spelling it out as I’m a visual learner. And best of all I can testify it works as I just won my first Deity game since I started back playing Civ V, despite multiple wars from AI’s.
big thanks for the vids, PCJL! I watched 3 or 4 of these in the past few days while going for my first Deity win (and no mods so I could get the achievement) in a decade of playing, and I finally broke through with Babylon tonight. very satisfying! though I'm so fortunate that among many other lucky breaks, Mongolia (who had >50% of the map game score) also chose Order and seemed to back off after I built air defenses. your tip about paying enemy civs to fight each other was the CLUTCH advice for me.
Summary:
- The most important thing is to prioritize growing your city to population 3. Settle your first city immediately. Once your city reaches population 3, it's time to move to settle other cities.
- Scout for the location of your cities. Choose tradition. Settle 4-5 cities depending on the number of unique luxuries you have (generally 1 city per luxury).
- Use your two scouts and your warrior to protect your settlers while they travel to their designated spots.
- Aim for 3 food tiles per city to allow your cities to grow quickly.
- How many workers do I need?: Two times the number of cities you have minus one.
- Make sure you have enough happiness to keep cities growing. Again, tradition is a good social policy because it provides happiness bonuses. Build entertainment complexes like circuses and coliseums to generate more happiness.
8:15 never thought Id hear the John Barnes rap in a civ 5 video lmao
😂 No idea why it came to my mind, but once I'd heard it in my brain I couldn't not say it when I recorded it 😛
Yeah what does everybody do when suddenly out of the blue another power which has shown absolutely no signs of aggression marches an unstoppable army to destroy you and you don't even have your third city built?
I use the relationship factors to guide me. Scrolling over the qualifier of their relationship to me (neutral, friendly, guarded...) I can see things like "they covet your lands" or "THEY COVET YOUR LANDS".
In this video they mentioned paying a civ to go to war with another civ. I guess you can maintain a dialogue with them and see how much they want from you for going to war with another civ. The more ready they are for war, the more willing there are going to be to take a bribe to war someone else.
That happens to me too. Can't imagine having 5 cities with one or two military units
Thanks PC. You're an expert of the game and an expert at explaining the game... rare combination! Just so I'm clear, are you switching cities to production focus as soon as they are founded? Or do you wait until pop 3?
Thank you for the very kind feedback!
There's 2 types of production focus which is where the confusion comes from (I didn't explain it in the video, so my bad) 😅
1 - Production focus trick. This is the trick where you set your city to any other focus setting as long as it's not food, to exploit the way yields are given to you when the city grows. Commonly, you would set production focus because production is the most important yield in the early game. See this guide video of mine, where one of the tips is the explanation of this trick: Top Deity Tips: ruclips.net/video/BE0M11HRV0k/видео.html
2 - Production focusing when producing settlers or when it's pointless to grow anymore. It's super easy to grow to pop 3. It's much harder to grow to pop 4. When your growth rate is bad it's almost always better to production focus until you can improve it. You can't grow when producing settlers so that's an obvious time to production focus. Similarly growing from pop 3 onwards when you haven't got 2 of the 3 growth factors I outlined in section 5 is pretty slow, so you might as well production focus again
I tick production focus when I found the city for the purposes of (1), however I will manually lock in food focus.
I then actually production focus when I hit pop 3, except in the rare occasion when growing to pop 4 before settlers makes sense
Thank you so much for this guide! You've turned me into an efficient civ player.
I was about to comment that "I need to write this down my memory sucks" and I noticed you have a pdf of the instructions in the description.
You Sir are a god!
Every tips guide on RUclips needs to have an accompanying powerpoint.
This guy knows how to teach!
I enjoyed this video. I had a couple of questions though that may be beyond the scope of this video or maybe not. Mainly regarding military. Any time I build Settler x3, the AIs get upset that I'm expanding so quickly and attack me. With just a warrior, I cannot react to that. Then, once the cities are established, how do you defend them? Barbarians like to pillage my tile improvements and with just 1 Warrior, it's an uphill battle.
Aside from trade routes, your strategies also work well for Unciv, an open source civ game based on civ 5 (no trade routes in unciv)
Hi , I usually don't write comments, but your guide is really good, specially because of your slides with written instruction, seems like a real classroom. Tx, cheers from Brazil.
knocked it out of the park with this one mate!!! absolutely smashing video!!
I got Norway as neighboor and followed your guide: in turn 46 got vanquished.
I had the luck to be on an island with Attila the Hun and lost my capital. I figured I'd try on prince, and still. Oof
There’s a Norwegian civ?
@@AbhishekRajNaharwheeeree is ittt
@@AbhishekRajNaharThere is a Norway civ in the 1066 scenario but I think maybe they meant Denmark
Ya on Diety Denmark always rushes you (Assuming you mean Denmark)
This is exactly what I've been looking for, thank you, keep up the amazing context 👏 😀
Thank you for the kind feedback, and glad this was helpful to you!
3:39 sometimes you have to wait to grow a worker because there are too many barbs
Wow amazing guide mate, very cool content, enjoyable and in depth detailed analysis with reasoning. Well put together. 😊 thanks
It's ironic how I played civ5 instead of paying attention in all of my college classes; because now I feel like I'm taking a college class on civ5, and I feel like I'm gonna fail the test.
Dude, you have two natural wonders and one of them is Uluru. It is obvious that you as Zulu should have picked one with nature sand get +8 faith in total from Uluru city and Eldorado.
Dude this is awesome I learned things I didn’t know about this game and I been playing since I was a kid
Great videos J Law! Perhaps you might do a "When to bail out video?" I find myself bailing out at turn 0 a lot because the starting position seems pretty horrible. I bail out when I get warred early and I don't see a clear way to survive. Later in the game though it's not so obvious that all is lost. The game takes so long to play, it would be really helpful to recognize early when there's no point in going on. Thank you.
THIS! Today alone, I bailed on 5 different games before turn 50 because I was worried I'd lose in the long run. I think I should just admit I suck at Civ 5 deity. lol But it would be nice to know what the signs are that I'm off to a bad start. For instance, in almost all my games, the deciding factor that made me quit was that the city-states were either too far away, or were not making workers that I could steal.
I’ve been playing this game for 10 years and I never realized that food strategies were the proper way to play diety games.
What about military? You just pray to not be attacked?
Great video! I played an entire 12 hour civ game straight and I cant get enough LOL
I think you're a fantastic presenter and your guide is the best.
900 subs! Congrats on nearly one thousand subs on this fantastic outdatet game🎉
Thank you!!
The only problem with this guide is that you are completely at the mercy of your neighbors. You have no military whatsoever and haven't even built walls anywhere. An early war would completely ruin you. It seems a little bit disingenuous to end the video where you did, because that Polish carpet of doom is about to completely destroy you. Best case scenario, you "only" lose the two cities North of your capital before you can peace out. Worst case scenario, Poland and America joint-war you and you get wiped by Minutemen attacking cities with 13 combat strength.
That being said, if you start next to Shaka, Alex, Attila, or even Monty on Deity, you might as well restart.
I have been playing civ for so long, thanks for this really help.
Been looking for a video like this for a long time. Thanks PC J Law
Thanks. That was interesting. So different from the way I usually play the game. I usually never made internal trade routes because the game suggested that it subtracts the value from the origin city which would mean there is no real gain. However that is just a false info the game gives you as I just researched. I usually went for money trade routes and bought the granaries.
Thank you! This content is so informative and your presentation style is so clear!
I do have a question about the early game- which pantheons do you recommend? I imagine that this is circumstantial but do you have any generalizable advice? Thank you!
i love your advice but sometimes if eel like getting even four cities on immortal/deity is hard, because city states/the AI claim all the spots before you. esp if you have insane forwad settler AI like siam near you.
This should be the intro to Civ5. It's a shame I didn't stumble across your video earlier.
such a good guide. Thanks!
Fantastic video. I'm enjoying having a baseline plan to work with.
Very useful guide,helped me get a decent game on deity :D
Good to see Civ 5 content. Currently playing;
England > Large > Fractal > Deity > Epic Speed. It's a showdown now between myself and a huge Persia. Looks like I'm going to win.
Looks like you play small maps normal speed. I think this is too easy. Try Deity on Large or huge maps, it's much harder.
The question I'm always stuck with is why aren't we settling on a Hill? I feel like I've started settling on hills a while ago, it just gives the +1 production vs not settling on the hill
man, i never seem to have good luck with my starts. an ai is always right nearby and has their 3 cities anywhere id like to go, and since they start off stronger, i get warred early and lose. that, and you end up with either a militaristic civ that will war you at the cost of not protecting city states or get stuck with a civ that protects all of the ones you find as your neighbor. even on this great looking salt start i fished for i just couldnt get it to work because monty decided that if i settled anywhere past the river he would take the city.
This Washington just casually showing up with minutemen in 80 AD
how are you going to defend from Poland?
Really helpful. I've been doing it wrong for years.
I like to go with a second warrior instead of a second scout cause half the time I get invaded early on
Great video! Thank you for the tips.
Thanks for the kind feedback! I'm glad you found them useful
Really apricate the PDF, super useful to be be able to read
Liked the video. Thanks
Your early game is amazing, In turn ~110-130 your science is always insane, I’m really studying your games and learned a lot, but it’s not easy, still my best SV is 204 on quick time and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong :/
Thanks for the compliment! For what it's worth, T204 quick speed is a very good turn time regardless!
Hopefully you've learned some tricks from watching to put them into action? If I had to choose 2 things that make my early games what they are, it's Growth technique and worker number (tips 5 and 6). Growth matters much more than tech path or National College timing, and the difference "working all improved tiles" makes is huge.
Is there something in the list you struggle with or are unsure about? I could perhaps offer some advice. If you're part of the Discord, a great idea would be to share a screenshot in #general-chat or #civ-5-ask-pcjlaw. Seeing your cities and your turn time I could give you a good guess at what you could do. A turn 100 quick speed (or T150 standard) screenshot usually tells a great deal about what went on in the early game
Bear in mind I have T100 population benchmarks:
3 cities - 45 pop
4 cities - 50 pop
5 cities - 55 pop
+5 pop for every additional city
@@PCJLaw thank you, I certainly will ask for evaluating my T100 games (immortal, quick), actually that's one thing I've learned from your videos is to benchmark at T100 empire to see if things went ok, and that's interesting what you said to put more effort for growth than in tech, which is probably what I'm doing wrong. Also, your build order, and especially timing when to build some things is essential I think. I won't mention your Inca liberty game, because it was exceptionally good, but f.e. your Korea game was outstanding IMO, and I've watched it few times actually to understand a bit more your thought process. Once again thank you for your time and sharing the knowledge, I think Civ 5 is having some renaissance era right now, as a civ 6 deity player I find civ 5 more entertaining, this game is aging very well, so it's good to see some high quality streams like yours. Peace!
@GiE audio Yeah the growth vs tech thing is interesting. The problem with it is, most of the advice on how to play Civ 5 comes from the earlier days of BNW. When I was first playing in 2015-2017, all that advice was already long-established. It took the community much longer to understand the growth snowball and how to do it, than to tech beeline, which was so much more formulaic but ultimately detrimental. You can thank the revitalised Chinese community, and the MP players in the post-Filthy era for figuring it out!
The build order is pretty key I would agree, particularly the workers, trade routes and granary
Thank you for the compliments on the games! I've improved quite a lot even since I first started the channel, because it's helped me rationalise the ideas in a consistent and repeatable format
I do hope civ 5 is having a bit of a rennaisance but we'll see 😛
I will never understand how you avoid wars and win on higher difficulties.
I've managed to win on emperor just once as highest difficulty, and I always struggle balancing expansion with military necessary to deter neighbors. And I still deal with wars a lot.
How do you do this when you go up to immortal/deity?
Is it just a lot of luck
You are awesome thank you!
Great video, thanks. I'm just wondering what mods you are using that give you a build queue and that easy way to see what is going on in your cities?
Great video! Given that Poland will probably declare war in a few turns, how would you deal with it if you can't preemptively pay them to war someone else? I usually end up losing a city on deity between turns 70-90 because my focus on growth hasn't allowed me to build an army.
Good question!
It seems like a cop out, but sometimes there's nothing you can do. In this empire's case, the choice to go to 5 cities instead of 4 is a high-risk, high-reward play. If it can avoid war until T100 it's hands-down the best choice. However, like with all wide(r) empires, it's super vulnerable to war between T50 and T100. The choice to go 5 cities determined the war vulnerability, rather than anything else.
That said, losing one city is probably not the end of the world on this land. Going from 5 -> 4 is much less bad than going from 4 -> 3 or 3 -> 2. Sometimes the Deity AI will happily peace you for the rest of the game once you've lost one city, especially if you manage to make it last a few turns
On stream I've had several examples of losing a city but still turning that into a win, but that only tends to work if you lose 1 city max, and you can stay with at least 3+ cities
On top of this, you have to remember that Deity AI powerspike between roughly T60 and T120 (quick speed), there are some situations that even the best in the world cannot stop
If I were to try and salvage this, it would be standary army composition. The key to war is to get hits off without taking hits. And for those units that take hits, to last for as many turns as possible. That's why FilthyRobot always used to refer to Melee units as "blocker units", because attacking with a melee unit speeds up it's death, so you fortify and block instead. You'd then want to tech xbows and attempt to defend with a balance of pikemen and comps/crossbowmen. If you can, you would also build a Walls in the city being attacked because it deals more damage back to "slamming" melee units, and resists ranged fire better (as well as dealing more of it's own damage)
As I said, however, the choice to go 5 cities reduced the ability for this empire to war. 3 cities is optimal for war between T70 and T100. While more cities will increase your overall production, they will in general be behind in infrastructure, thus meaning they're less able to handle losing 15 turns to military production. The capital in particular takes the most punishment in that respect
Sorry it's not the greatest of answers, but this is why paying for a war is always the best option. If there's an AI you don't think you'll convice to war it's better to squeeze a few military units in, instead of some vanity buildings (e.g. Shrines, Temples, Guilds, World Wonders)
Awesome, thanks for the response! I've been winning consistently on immortal since watching your videos and have recently begun trying deity. Haven't won yet, but will keep trying to get it!
@@stevenchoi86 Good luck and I'm glad the videos have helped!
At diety, I keep getting attacked a few turns after as the settling phase is over.
What can I do?
Love this video style!
Great - thanks for the feedback and glad you liked it!
Best ever. Subbed
Here's what stumps me with a lot of these guides: if you are going to grow at such a speed, and support 2 workers per city, how on Earth are you affording it? I'm chronically low on happiness and gold in the Classical Era, even with Meritocracy and all luxuries improved. In most of my playthroughs not using any caravans for gold and building a dozen workers would mean going into the red at least until I research Currency. I'm not even talking about maintaining the army. Just... how?
This works on a small\standard map for a science\peaceful victory where the AI's have terrain or border limits. On larger maps the AI's will spam 15+ cities each (all growing tall), snowball, and then stomp you. They WILL attack around turn 150 on standard bc their military strength is way higher. On a huge map what does your 4-5 tall city build with zero military do when Greece backstabs you then rushes with 20+ units? Have you beaten deity on domination? Let the AI build the cities and wonders for you then take them. You want 4 large core cities sure but will need a ton more to hold land and churn out units. And it's a totally different game trying to manage unit maintenance, city count, etc.
Although I do like the concept of Tradition for those core cities. I just think you're rolling the dice on if they rush you.. and they will on larger maps hands down.
great tutorial subbed
Why found bulawayo? Its between dessert & tundra with no (new)luxury
Instead of far west with copper
Good question! There's actually a new unique luxury in there that's hidden by my face for most of the video (Marble)
The only thing that matters is the number of good tiles in the city, not the number of bad tiles (although naturally more good tiles often means fewer bad tiles)
Usually, 12-15 good tiles is all you need (tiles with 3+ yield once improved), but you can go as low as 10 if necessary. More cities is always better, so as long as I've got the happiness room I'll found one as long as there are enough decent tiles
As for the copper city, there weren't enough food tiles left after I founded Nobabma. I placed it there because I thought it was a better city for having the Fish, Whales, Cattle and Iron, over whatever it got from being further South
Any other city for the Copper would have been too close to Germany.
Also, I founded Bulawayo for the map control to some degree. Leaving that wide open space is asking for barbarian nuisance, and the AI would just put an annoying city there later
DONT ONLY THANK PC!! THANK HIS LOVE FOR ED SHEERAN TOO!!! HES NOT JUST A GEEK!! HES ALSO INTERESTED IN “the shape of you!”
I'm watching Deity guides to play on Immortal so i can completely destroy the AI. So far i've won only a couple of Immortal games (all sci victory) and i wonder, what sort of difficulty spike is there going from Immortal to Deity ? Because it was massive between emperor and immortal.
So what do you do when 2 civs decide to declare war on you? The build order has good logic but doesn't account for A.I. aggression.
Basically restart I think 😅
If they diety that means 2 things, u fcked sth up seriously and/or u like total war action and u r culture rushing montezuma:-) but yea this guide is controversial to Say The least
Great guide! Do you play Civ 6 as well?
every time I start, the city state workers are inside super high level military units and never leave them. how am i supposed to steal them?
Thanks, help'd me a lot.
So how do you deal with AI invasions? I'm 1 and 5 on immortal level. I've gone with the four city strategy but got teamed up on by Rome and America on one, Impi rushed on another, and teamed again with Huns and Austria. This is happening consistently around turns 80-120.
I'm usually getting rushed by anywhere from 8 to 15 units which a comp bow, spearman/ pikeman army can't handle. If I spend time on walls and units, I'm not "getting there fast enough". How do you beat this viscous cycle? Even friending a military city state doesn't get you units fast enough to match an invader.
Best way is to prevent war by bribing the AI's to fight each other as soon as you see their army heading towards you. even if they're right on your border as soon as you bribe them to go to war with another deity AI they will no longer declare on you for the duration of that war. Regardless I usually just build 3 archers (sometimes even 4-5 if england for example, because of longbowman later) and upgrade to composite bowman. use one melee unit as well. build city walls if the frontline city is exposed / has poor terrain that's not easy to defend (you want to avoid this, settle in places where you can defend more easily). i usually get declared at least once especially with aggressive AI's. composite bowmen + defendable location + walls and just let them send their carpet of doom into your city until they're all dead and settle for peace (though i try to keep going until i get my first great general).
Great guide, but I only own gods and kings is this guide still viable with that and what would you change in build order?
Did PCJ quit streaming altogether or taking a hiatus ?
this is helpful. i can beat immortal if i get a really good start, so this should help with that. thanks
Thanks for the feedback and glad you found it useful! Hope you can use it to improve your Immortal play!
I want to believe Civ7 is coming, never played 4 or 6
Love civ5 thanks for video
When I tried this strategy I had several issues. It took a long time to get the national college, my faith took forever to get started, and my gold was negative so my science tanked. Do you lay down your settlers right away? They take alot of turns to build like 8 turns in the early game
I hope you start making videos again, PC.
@6:20 you have what that gave you all the gold? You said you weren't going to use it to be authentic, then immediately say you bought a 3 food tile.
steal workers, i do it all the time, its amazing how well it works!
Thanks for all the info!
My favorite map is archipelago, and i had to do some minimal adjustements, since optics is needed sometimes more than other techs.
Do you recommend anything in particular for this map?
It's my favorite cause i prefer naval warfare for their mobility, sometimes in land maps, you have an army of elephants to cross hills and jungles :(
Each new city first build has to be a military unit. If you don't you're dead.
Some interesting points but you sometimes advise like it's solitaire and the AI has no interaction. I'm quite good at this game and the AI will 100% of the time be aggressive and attempt to destroy me regardless of what I do or how I approach. Let's not forget the ravenous barbarians that totally focus on you, ruining your units and scouts. By turn 20 I've had 6 barbarians attack me with the ottomans having chariots and Russians catapults all attemoting to invade even though both were "friendl." and trading with me. No mention of that here. 😂 🤦🏻♂️
Everytime I play on immortal - only 5 times so far- there are always opposing civs close to me. Usually at least 3. At the stage where you're building your first settler you have tonnes of space and no other civs. I'm usually meeting other civs on turn 5 at least.
Standard map and standard speed. Any tips?
What expansion packs are used in this game play in addition to standard Civ V? I only have Civ V standard. Thx!
now explain how to deal with zulu next to you
Genius, man I got destroyed on deity lol
What's the shrine thing you are referring to? The monument? Civilopedia had nothing about no shrine...
wdym build order is in the description, it’s not
how do you stop barbarians from stomping on your farms and mines...besides all that building?
What did you do about all the Polish units around your borders?
So in the start of the game once I have 2 scouts and a builder I should just focus my capital on just building settlers till I have about 4 cities? Then focus on granary for those cities and builder next? Meanwhile finishing the traditional tree only?
I pumped out 4 cities at 3 pop in my capital, everyone very unhappy, things take forever to pick up . while everyone else is easily double or triple my highest populated city, im improving unique luxuries just to get my happiness not red. Something doesnt seem to add up, will try again with 3 instead of 4 cities I guess. this strat also seems to only get a pantheon, by the time you get enough faith for a religion, they are all taken.
also portugal is an awful neighbor, will have 4 cities or so before you can get your second one out, and will continue to ICS all around you
Ngl these seem like great tips but I don't know if I can follow-through I'm such a sucker for rushing Great Library early.
Good video m8
Thanks - glad you liked the video!