Civ didn't go so well for my and my friend,lol. Help on strategy, very broke/unhappy civs,but yet computer is fine

about 1400 AD or so, I'm in a war with Alexander, doing quite well chumping his cities one by one with my ranged boats, I'd missspell them if I tried, Galleleious lol.


trying to upgrade and bide time to Frigates. Anyways, I'm Russia my friend is Washington,he's doing ok for his first time ever playing. Suddenly the A.I. Sweden who is quite stout and probably the strongest player in the game declares war on my friend and runs ALL up in his base with all these high level units and shit...lol. Knights,those swordsman,I think even musketmen (which currently we were researching, heard it's good to sorta rush to pure musketmen....I however teched up to the ranged boats since they fared me well in another game chumping the A.I. cities and just walking in with a warrior to capture it)


thing is,my unhappiness with at 16 and I was broke, I think I must have had 6-7 cities or so.


Played on king mode I think,I should of done prince.

Not long after this Danish bluetooth guy declares war on us. Somehow someway right as I'm blockading Athens the capital city of Alexander, my friend brokers a peace deal with Alexander, and convinces him through a big trade to declare war on Danish, and the Babylonians who had just declared war on me, and who I know I couldn't beat since their cities were deep inside the land and not on coast.


Alexander was too scared to team up with us against Sweden though. I think my friend was GG in that game, Sweden was slowly chumping his city Philly,then would just move up.


I could have took some of Sweden's cities no problem, BUT BUT a small piece of ice blocked me from going to his side of the continent with boats, so I think my friend was screwed. It was pretty bad on his part to have about 4-5 cities with NO army at all though,lol. He said he was purely focusing on getting his happiness and gold up.



The thing I don't get is, it seems like a real double edged sword. If I don't expand and capture cities, I'm going to be weak as hell compared to other players, but if I do, my economy goes to shit very quickly,and I accumulate mass unhappiness lol.


what do you guys do? Was it the fault of playing on king mode and it gave the a.i. unfair advantage? I didn't like how my army wasn't THAT big compared to Sweden and he had way more cities, but yet he's chugging along just perfectly fine and I'm broke/unhappy in my civ. I had improved 98% of every tile in my borders too pretty much.


I was thinking maybe in another game if we could hold out, I play PURE defense and take a long time to get nukes then just nuke everybody lol.

But if I never have war and capture cities, I'm going to be very weak compared to the others, it would be like small Cuba taking on the US for example lol.

Fuck Civ

Hate this game

I say fuck it on harder modes for sure, it gives the a.i. unfair advantages. I'm just an average guy trying to enjoy it with a little challenge not stacking godly civs against me.



sorry if the post turned into a wall of text,it didn't seem that way when I was typing it...lol


just TRULY seems like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't in the game, you HAVE to expand otherwise you'll be a weak ass chump civ compared to other strong ones, but then unhappiness and economy go to hell real quick, and unhappiness said it makes the units even weaker.



if unhappiness is high enough,people will have a revolution against your ass,happened in my 1st game lol.

you really shouldn't jump into higher difficulties, build up to it gradually.

happiness is the easiest to solve. build circuses, and then the Circus Maximus. If you can time it in a decent order in each of your cities, you'll never really go under. A good rule of thumb whenever you found a new city is you wanna have 10 happiness or more, that helps to buffer it.

As to money, that depends what your citizens are working, and where your resources are going. Trade is the lifeblood of civilizations, it does you no good to have 4 Citrus and 3 Gems, when you could trade a set of gems for 6GP/turn over 25 turns. That's a simple way to get gold. Another is to allocate citizens in cities to working Silver, Gold, Gems and I think some natural wonders. That way, you have a slightly high constant gold amount coming in. On top of this, markets. You need them. Every city should have a market.

If you're talking Brave New World, then trade caravans are a great way to earn cash. Typically its a low-risk investment to send a caravan from your capital to a nearby capital or a city state, and it'll usually give you a decent amount of GPT.

Becoming allies with city states is a great way to boost happiness because you'll get a copy of any of their luxury and strategic resources. Also trading extra luxuries you have to other civs for ones you don't have is going to boost you up too and you might make some friends.

Advanced units also cost alot of gold to maintain so if your army is anything more than a few units for defense then you'll really ding your GPT. As long as you're not right on top of an aggressive civ you can get away with not really building an army and just focusing on science or something.

Getting ahead of the others tech wise is pretty important cause then you can have free reign over the wonders you want and that will really benefit you.