Episode: 4650
Title: Playing Civilization V, Part 12
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4650/hpr4650.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:01 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4650, for 2026-05-29
Today's show is entitled, "Playing Civilization V, Part 12"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:14:30
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "We begin a sample game of Civilization V."
Hello, this is Huka, welcoming you to another exciting episode in our ongoing look at computer
strategy games, and we're continuing with Civilization 5, and up until now we've been explaining
the various mechanics of how this works, but to help put it firmly in your mind what I'm
going to do is play a game and tell you about what happens as we go through it and what decisions
I'm making and why I'm making them, which I hope is going to make it a lot easier to absorb all
of this information. So Civilization 5 introduced a new victory type, so I thought it might be fun
to try that, and that is the diplomatic victory. Now I decided I would play as Austria
on the Prince level. The Prince level means that all players are equal and no one is favored.
Now there are plenty of people who say, oh, you know, Prince level is too easy, you know,
I go for deity level. Great, all the more power to you if you want to do it.
I play games for fun. I don't need to impress anybody, and you shouldn't feel any need to
impress anybody either. So in this case, I'm playing on Prince level, and that means that I'm not penalized
anyway. I'm not benefited in any way. The computer players I play against aren't benefited or penalized
in any way. Then for my map, I chose a fractal with a map size standard, game speed standard.
My only advanced option was quick combat, because I didn't need to see that
drawn out, particularly since I planned to avoid combat as much as necessary.
My leader is Maria Teresa, and her Austria has the unique ability called diplomatic marriage.
Now this allows us to either annex or puppet any city state that has been allied to us for five
turns with the proper expenditure of gold. My plan was to use this to puppet the city states to
control their votes for the diplomatic victory, but that was a misunderstanding of the rules.
I actually implemented one of the hardest ways to win a diplomatic victory. Nonetheless, that's what I did.
Now to get them to ally with me, the most effective way to do this is with cash and lots of it.
And of course, even more cash to actually affect the puppeting of them.
So my overriding objective in this game is to amass a large treasury.
Yeah, a large treasury is never a bad thing in a game of sieve.
Now I can't ignore my military either, because a weak military invites attacks from greedy neighbors.
And, you know, I may need to liberate the occasional city state if another player conquers them.
Austria also has a unique unit, the Hassar, which replaces the cavalry unit. It can move after attacking,
has a flanking bonus, and has one extra movement.
And the unique building is the coffee house, which increases the generation of great people in the
city by 25%. So you can expect me to build those in every city as well.
Now with that in mind, I started the game and settled in place.
I had mountains nearby, but also sheep and silver within my city, so some useful resources.
I immediately started to produce a scout as my first unit and sent my warrior out to explore.
In the very early stage, I focused on exploring the surrounding area and finding any goody huts,
which in this game are called ruins. My initial city site is not exactly ideal as it is all
hilly with a jungle nearby. After building my two scouts, my next priority was to build a worker
unit to increase the productivity of my city. And for my first social policy, I unlocked tradition.
When I got my second policy, I picked oligarchy and planned to complete all of the tradition tree.
I cleared out a barbarian encampment and then discovered my first city state, Vilnius.
Then I needed to clear out another barbarian encampment that was blocking me from finishing my exploration.
Meanwhile, I'm focusing on getting texts for sailing the ocean blue because that is how I plan to get
trade routes to discover city states I can pop it and so on. Now, because money is
to key to my strategy, I made a beeline for currency in my science research.
And while headed there, I completed the tradition tree.
When I can get there, I will work on the commerce tree to maximize my cash.
But until then, the patronage tree will let me improve my city state relations, which is important
for improving my relationships with city states. After all, you need to be allies with them
for five turns before you can pop it them. I now have three cities and can probably squeeze out
a few more, which should be sufficient to my needs. Now, at turn 141, I have six cities,
and that's all I will build in this game. I now have the technology to build workshops,
which are the first productivity boosters available, so I set all my cities to building them.
For research, my immediate object was to get to compass, so that I could build the galley ass,
which would let me do more ocean exploration. But to go into deep ocean, I will need to go further
to get astronomy, which will let me build the caravel, which can enter deep ocean.
Once I got that, I switched to banking, not just for money, but as a prerequisite for building
the forbidden palace, which grants two additional delegates in the world's Congress or later
United Nations. When I get banking, I'll go back to astronomy and then navigation to advance my
sea going capabilities. Now, by turn 216, I had gotten banking and started on the forbidden palace.
And by luck, just as I started, I got a great engineer. I'm holding him in a reserve in case I need
to hurry productions, and great engineers are the only way to do that with an in civilization five.
I also picked up astronomy, which will let me build caravels to explore the whole ocean.
My next research priority will be gunpowder since it is time to beef up my defenses.
At turn 240, my caravel started to come out, and I found several new city states.
And since my treasury is healthy, I started the turn with 6,000 gold, and I'm bringing in a
hundred each turn. I began the process of puppeting city states. So let's take a look at how that works.
There are some few details here. So the requirements are two things.
First, you have to be allied with the city state for five consecutive turns.
Second, you have to have the right amount of cash. Now, this amount is not too much early on,
but it rises over time. So, how do you become allies with the city state?
There are a number of things you can do to improve your relationship.
You can take on a quest that a city state has published, which can be things like
find another natural wonder or create a great admiral.
These quests pop up continuously through the game and you're free to ignore them.
But fulfilling one will improve your relationship.
Trade will also improve your relationship. So in this game, all of my trade routes were made with
city states. If you are in a position to have a successful war, you can find a former city
state that was conquered by one of the empires. The other players, in other words,
liberate it, and then it will be your ally for the rest of the game.
Giving them presents is how I usually do it, though. You can give them units or money.
If your purpose is to get allies, money works best. But I do gift units in two circumstances.
First, if I have obsolete units, giving them away might be better than deleting them,
because at least I'm getting a little something in terms of my relationship with the city state.
Second, if a city state is under attack by another empire,
gifting the units might help them hold out and make life difficult for one of your rivals.
Now, the place for all of this is done is the city state screen, which opens up when you click on the
bar above the city state, which is where you handle all of your relationships.
Now, at the top of the screen, you see your current status, which more often than not will be neutral,
which is how all city state relationships start out. But you can get the angry,
for instance, by moving a unit of yours into their territory.
Now, if you only do it once and give them a little time to get over it,
they will go back to neutral. You can also improve the relationship by pledging to protect the city
state, but be careful. If they get attacked and you do not try to protect them, they will get
very angry. Giving a gift opens a pop-up to say what kind of gift you want to give,
250 gold, 500 gold, 1000 gold, or a unit. Note that a unit is only worth 5 influence points.
Well, 250 gold is worth 20. So, as I said, money is more powerful if your aim is to improve your status
with them. So, at turn 242, I found the city state of Singapore and it appears that I was the first
empire to find them. So, I immediately pledged to protect them. My influence with them was 20,
which is neutral. We just met and that is where things stand on first meeting. To be friends,
you need to get to 30 and to be allies, you need to get to 60.
When I clicked next turn, I got a quest from Singapore. They were worried about a barbarian
campment nearby. And if I cleared it out, I would get the additional influence with them.
In this case, though, I let that go by. I want to move more quickly and Singapore is across the ocean
from me. My influence with them at this point was 21, so only a modest increase.
But I have 6,038 gold in my treasury and I'm bringing in 102 per turn.
So, let's see what a gift of 500 gold will do. Well, it brings me to 65 influence. So, we're now allies.
But when I mouse over Singapore, the pop-up window reminds me that my influence will decrease
by 1.12 per turn. For an empire other than Austria, this would mean a regular infusion of cash to
keep up your status. And I have one diplomatic victories with other empires by saving up a lot of
cash and dumping it on city-states just before the vote. But for Austria, you have a special ability
called diplomatic marriage that lets you turn the city-state into a pop-up and that is permanent.
But it also presents some obstacles, as we'll see. We are allies now, but my influence will drop
by one each turn, and I might lose my ally ship before I can puppet them. But I can gift a unit
and get another 5 points, and I happen to have a very obsolete warrior unit that will serve the purpose.
However, it takes 3 turns for the unit to arrive, so I lose a few points,
but I'm still fine. At turn 247, I can now use the diplomatic marriage option to make
a puppet of Singapore. Prior to doing this, I was 4th in score with 604, while the leader had 729.
My happiness level was plus 25, and I now had 5,833 gold in my treasury.
Then I made Singapore a puppet, and now I'm third in the game, with a score of 664.
My treasury has fallen to 5,258, which means it cost me 575 gold.
But most significant is that my happiness fell from plus 25 to plus 9, which is a big loss.
I have enough gold to puppet 4 or 5 more city-states at this time, but if I did, I would have
rebellions breaking out and my empire would collapse. Now this is the obstacle that Austria has to face.
We need to promote happiness before we go much further with making puppets.
Civ is always a game of balances. So with that, this is Huka, signing off, and as always,
I encourage you to support free software. Bye-bye.
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