Civilization 5 Tips & Tricks

Tips – General Gameplay

• Workers don’t cosume food any more for production, and they take a lot longer to build improvements. A good way to get more workers, without worrying about spending time and resources, is to be a total dick and harvest them from city states or rival civs. – jambonilton
• Barbarian camps are great for boosting revenue early in the game. Starting the ‘Honor’ policy will get them showing up for you. It’s good to have a couple of fast units to run around raiding them. – jambonilton
• Culture and policies are huge. It’s like getting a new civ trait every so often for accumulating culture. In the end, if you get enough, it’s an easy win for the utopian project (er whatever that is). – jambonilton
• Happiness, as mentioned by others, plays a big role. Always keep it in the back of your mind, and consider making puppet states instead of annexing when your citizens are bordering on discontent. Not to mention happiness gets you more golden ages, and there’s a trait in piety that will convert half your excess happiness to culture. – jambonilton
• City states are game changers. I advise always doing their little missions, or gunning for money-techs and letting the city states do the work for you. That being said, you can’t afford to keep all of them happy, and some of them build on nice resources, and they’re really easy to take out. – jambonilton
• Roads, roads, roads – Makes traveling across your empire so much faster. What i have been doing is building roads up to places i want to conquer, then rush an army in, take over the city and set up a trade route – BettingPoland

Tips – Starting Out

• Ruins (the new goody huts) are awesome. Scouting for these is a big deal in the first handful of turns, especially since units are faster. It’s probably better to save barbarian camps for later and get back on scouting. – jambonilton
• Barbarian camps are great for boosting revenue early in the game. Starting the ‘Honor’ policy will get them showing up for you. It’s good to have a couple of fast units to run around raiding them. – jambonilton

Tips – Combat

• Out-tech your opponent. Rush to Writing and build Libraries fast. The difference between units is immense now. Spearmen will almost always crush Warriors, for example, so make sure you have the newest possible units. – troglodyte
• Get a Great General and keep him in the fight. Arrange your units such that the Great General is in an adjacent hex to as many of your units as possible. Usually I do three bulwark units in front and two ranged units behind, with the general in one of the ranged unit’s hexes. The AI isn’t that ruthless about Great Generals, so you can be pretty reckless with them. If you’re going to lose, quaff the General for a Golden Age. This layout is even more effective with some of the Honor bonuses. – troglodyte
• Surround enemy units. There’s a significant flanking bonus. The converse is “don’t let your units get surrounded.” – troglodyte
• Never attack across rivers. Avoid attacking uphill or into forests if possible. Generally I find that the promotion that gives a bonus attacking into cover more useful than the promotion that gives a bonus for attacking into the open, because it helps negate their defensive bonuses. – troglodyte
• Attacking cities. Muster your units 3 hexes away from the target city. Once they have full moves, move them in ALL AT ONCE. The city is going to bombard your units, and it will heal. Minimize the damage by attacking swiftly. Your goal is to reduce the city in 1 or 2 turns. Any more and you’ll take heavy casualties from bombardment and reinforcement. Always lead the attack with Archers and Siege Weapons; your goal is to get the city low enough that your infantry can smack it hard. Often the battle preview will tell you that your infantry will almost kill it; in those cases, if you take the risk, they USUALLY will kill it. – troglodyte
• When assaulting a city or large enemy army, try to hold hills and forests. The defensive penalty is MASSIVE for being in the open, PLUS units can get promotions to hit you in the open. Being in the open against an equal-tech army is the fastest way to lose a unit in one fight. – troglodyte
• Siege weapons take one move to set up. They can either move one hex and set up (barring rough terrain that takes 2 moves) or they can set up and fire. Use that to plan your assaults. Siege weapons are also spectacular ranged units against units in the field, so use them as such– set up if there’s gonna be a fight. They’ll often straight-up kill enemy units. – troglodyte
• Build resource-dependent units. Longswordsmen are better than musketmen! Those resource-dependent units are the bread and butter of your army. Use them! Horse units are particularly awesome; they’re as strong or stronger than equivalent infantry and they’re FAST. I gather workers with them. The only downside is they don’t get defensive bonuses– so use them to fill open terrain in your lines rather than wasting good terrain on them. – troglodyte
• Avoid Spearmen, but DON’T be afraid to take a risk to take out weakened, marauding Spearmen if you can do it without losing too many horsemen. – troglodyte
• Medic now heals that unit and all units in adjacent hexes. Get it. Especially if you’re keeping tight formations, which is what’s effective anyway, Medic is really good. – troglodyte

If there any posts you think I’m missing just post them here and I’ll add them to this post.

Original Link – Continuation of discussion