Episode: 4610
Title: Playing Civilization V, Part 10
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4610/hpr4610.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:15:05 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4610, for 2026-04-03
Today's show is entitled, "Playing Civilization V, Part 10"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:18:16
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "We continue our look at the game mechanics of Civilization V."
Hello, this is a hookah welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our ongoing series on computer strategy games
And we are still taking a look at civilization five and we've just got a few more topics to cover before we go into playing a game and
Illustrating all of these things
So the first thing I want to talk about is great people
And there are various kinds of great people that you get in this game and you get them by accumulating great person points
Each type of great person has its own type of great person point and they are earned independently
So you can easily accumulate points for several different types of great people at the same time
Now you can earn these points through specialists through wonders
And through social policies
While you can accumulate points towards any and all great people you should focus on once that fit your game strategy
If you're going for a domination victory you should focus on great generals and great adbrills and
Preference to great artists and great musicians
But if you're going for a cultural victory you might want to reverse that
Now that is not to say you won't gain a few random other great people along the way just that you should know what you're trying to achieve
And great generals and great adbrills are a little different in that you earn them by winning battles
Now as an example in the game we're going to look at after this episode
Where I was going for a diplomatic victory. I had a couple of great generals. I earned along the way. I had no use for them
I never fought a single battle against any other player in the game throughout the entire game
So I happen to you know
Get a couple of great generals, but you know, I just parked them somewhere and had them sleep throughout the game
Because I didn't need them
So what are the types of great people?
Great artist
A great artist can start a golden age or it can create great works
We've talked about golden ages
If you feel the need to start one, you know, that's a good use for a great artist
If you're going for a culture victory, I'm not sure that's the best way to go
I think that creating a great works would
Advance you a little more towards that goal particularly with ones you earn early in the game
Because you know, it can add up over time
Great musician
Can do a concert tour which adds to your tourism or can create a great work
In this case a great work of music a
Great writer can write a political treat us which gives you
a
lump sum of culture or it can create a great work of writing
That will add to your culture per turn
A great engineer can hurry production
Including wonders this is the only way you can rush build a wonder in this game is by using a great engineer
If you don't need to use the great engineer for that the other thing they can do is create something called a mania factory
That adds to your productive capacity capabilities
A great general you know if you're going to be fighting battles their handy because they give you a combat combat bonus to any unit within two tiles
Or you can use it to create a citadel and one of the interesting things a great general can do when creating a citadel
The steel land from one of your neighbors
Now they don't like it, but
There's nothing they can do about it other than go to war with you
Now
Angolia has a unique unit called the con that creates
It replaces the great general it moves faster and heels adjacent units and can also create a citadel
Now there's a great merchant
Great merchant can do a trade mission and what that means is you go to a
city state any city state that you want to
You go to and it would the trade mission will give you gold and it will add to your influence with that city state
So what you do is you move the great merchant to the city state territory and then trigger the trade mission
Now Venice has a unique unit called the merchant of Venice which creates which replaces the the great merchant
Now
An additional 100% gold
An additional 100% influence
Or it can even puppet a city state
And what puppeting means is that
You have control of the city state to the extent that you control all of its units and it's considered to be part of your territory
But you don't control the build queue of the city
Now you could also use the merchant of Venice to create a customs house just as you can with any great merchant
Great scientist
Can hurry research
If you want to get just a lump sum of
Research points where you've created an academy that gives you an additional per turn now
I probably early in the game would almost always go for creating an academy because it gives you a little extra every turn
That can add up over time
But if you're at the very end of the you know if you're in the modern era
Chance is are you never enough time to really benefit all that much from an academy and so getting a
Big lump of research is probably a better approach
Great admiral gives a combat bonus to naval units within two tiles and can repair adjacent naval and embarked units
And finally great profit
Can found or enhance a religion
Can spread religion or can create a holy site
Now every type except a great admiral can create something but that uses up the great person
And the main action for each also uses up the great person for instance if you do a concert tour
Hurry production
etc
So you need to consider which one works best for you
So
As I said before like with the great scientist early on academy
Great use in great scientist
You know by the time you're hitting the modern era
Probably just makes more sense to get a big bang
From the hurting the research
Now if there's a key wonder you need to make your strategy work having a great engineer on hand or hurry it up can pay off very nicely
You know it really sucks if you're
Really counting on getting a particular great wonder you've started building it and you're getting almost there and suddenly
Someone else finished it and
You know yeah, so I
Having great engineer on hand
It's just it's a useful thing to have for that
Now the next topic one to talk about is trade
So in civilization five the amount of gold you are in from terrain is much lower than in previous versions of silk
So the path to a full treasury requires that you set up trade routes
You have a limited number of trade slots available but that limit does grow over time
You can earn slots in two ways the first is through discovering text
For instance in the ancient era
Animal husbandry and sailing
Can do that in the classical era discovering engineering
In medieval era discovering the compass
In the Renaissance era discovering banking
In the industrial era discovery biology
In the modern era discovering the railroad and in the atomic era discovering penicillin
So just from keeping up your research you can get up to eight trade routes
In addition the wonders classes and Petra each provide an additional trade route
What does that tell you? Well
That tells you that if your strategy is based on getting a lot of gold
Those should be wonders that you would target because those additional trade routes
And you know you're talking about fairly early wonders here
So getting those means you're gonna get trade routes that are gonna be generating gold for you throughout the entire game
So for instance if your strategy is to go after
Well, let's say a diplomatic victory is is one that gold is really key for
You know you might want to take a look at doing that not doesn't mean that if you don't get those wonders
You can't win a diplomatic victory. There's you can do any number of things in this game if you're skillful with it
Now you can also establish a trade route with your own cities with city states and with other empires
Trade routes are always city to city and are limited by distance
So it can make sense sometimes to move your trade unit to a different city
The city that produce the unit will always be where it shows up first
But you can transfer it to another city on its first turn
Now if it's a cargo ship it can only be placed on a coastal city
But it can bring a desired destination city within range
Note that for land units
Caravans in the early game
You can increase the range by building roads which kind of makes sense
Now what about the effects of trade
You know your major reason for doing it is to get gold no question about that
But there can also be science, culture and religious effects so it's worth paying attention here
So even if gold is the main object you may have several options that provide equivalent amounts of gold
And a potential gain of science or culture might be the tiebreaker depending on what your strategy for victory is
If you establish a trade route with the city state you can receive gold
Provide religious pressure to convert them to your religion and gain influence with them
This can be very helpful if you're going for a diplomatic victory
But I would not accept a large difference in gold just for that minor influence game
You gain far more influence with gold in the long run
So I tend to start with get the maximum amount of gold and then if I've of two cities providing equivalent amounts of gold for the trade route
Then I look to well all right can I get a little science or a little culture in addition
Now setting up trade between your cities
Which is an option can be helpful in giving a boost to a city because you you're consent them food in production
Now in the earlier phases of the game that might be a good idea to get a city up to fold an element
The city where the route originates does not lose anything
But some added amount shows up in the destination city
However for food trade to happen you need to have a granary in each city and
For a production to be transferred you need to have a workshop in each city
Finally
Plundering trade routes can be plundered by empires you are at war with
more often by barbarians when that happens
The route disappears and you need to build another trade unit and set up another route
Now
Plundering a route
Simply means you lose the route it doesn't mean you lose the capacity the number of trade routes you have
That you're allowed to have doesn't change
Now the last thing we want to talk about is who are you gonna play as?
There are 43 possible civilizations in Civ 5 so I am not gonna discuss them all in depth here
I've got a link in the show notes to the Civ wiki for a chart that shows them all
What I want to do instead is discuss why they are different and how you should make choices
Depending on the victory type you're choosing
Of course if you let the game make the choice few randomly
Well knowing what each Civ is good for can help you determine what type of strategy to pursue for your best chance of victory
Now the first thing to know about each Civ is that they have a starting bias for where they will spawn at the beginning of the game
And this can be either positive or negative
Either you are more likely to spawn in certain terrain or less likely to spawn in certain terrain
England which is a naval power will be biased to spawn on the coast
Where as Egypt a famously desert country will have a negative bias to avoid jungler forest locations
Second all Civs have one or more unique abilities
For example the Carthaginians have two abilities that come from history
The first is Phoenician heritage which means that all coastal cities get a free harbor
And once they have earned a great general their military units can cross mountain tiles and they're the only ones that can do this
All right, obviously that's an echo of Hannibal crossing the Alps
The French have the city of light ability which grants double-theming bonuses for museums and wonders that are in the capital
Third each Civ has a unique unit
These units replace one of the regular units in the game but are enhanced in some way
Spain has two of these the first the Turcio replaces the musket man
But it has a plus 50% bonus against mounted units and an increased melee strength making it a combination of musket man and Pikeman
The other unit the conquistador replaces the night, but it has some interesting abilities
It can move after attacking if it still has movement points
Embarked units have double defense it can see two tiles further and has no penalty when attacking cities
Finally the conquistador unit can be used to establish a city although it uses up that unit
So it can function as a settler
Finally most but not all civs have unique building or improvement
As with units these tend to replace ordinary buildings and improvements but offer something better
A rabia for instance has the bizarre which replaces the marketplace
But it provides an additional two-gold to return more than the marketplace
It adds one additional copy of each improved luxury resource near the city
and provides plus two gold for each oasis and each source of well
Now what you need to consider is how all these unique
Attributes of a sieve will fit into your strategy
And timing matters the American sieve has a unique unit of the b7 team bomber
That's a nice unit, but it comes very late in the game
If you're going to go for a domination victory
That's not going to really help you probably have mostly conquered the world by the time that becomes available
But the Roman units of the balista and the legion are excellent for an early campaign of conquest
Now for a trade-oriented strategy
Portugal is excellent as all of its unique attributes help with generating trade and gold and gold is the key to
Many possible paths to victory
So keep these points in mind as you plan your strategy
And to illustrate all of things we have been discussing in the civilization five series
I will play a game where I aim for a diplomatic victory and I'll make a few mistakes along the way
But you know, it will still illustrate
How the game can be played and and I do end up winning
So that'll be coming up next so this is Huka for hacker public radio signing off and as always encouraging you to support free software. Bye. Bye. Bye
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