Episode: 4630 Title: Playing Civilization V, Part 11 Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4630/hpr4630.mp3 Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:15:29 (official HPR transcript) --- This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4630, for 2026-05-01 Today's show is entitled, "Playing Civilization V, Part 11" The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:13:07 The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA The summary is "We finish our look at the game mechanics of Civilization V." Hello, this is a hookah welcome you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode We enter ongoing series on computer strategy games and we're continuing with civilization five And what I want to do today is I want to talk about basically all of the players in the game there are 43 empires here and This is I'm talking about You know all of the expansions and downloadable content and everything else So five is certainly quite complete at this point and there's no more updates coming that haven't been for a long time So you've got 43 possible empires the thing is they're not all alike and It matters which one you are and it should affect your strategy Each empire has a particular leader a Unicability and the unique unit In addition, most of them have some kind of starting bias and many have a unique building or unique improvement Understanding how to make use of these is important to your strategy If you let random chance assign you to an empire You need to know what kind of strategy will work with that empire And if you want to pursue a particular strategy You might want to know how to pick an appropriate empire to fit the strategy Now there is a chart that lists all 43 empires with all of their parameters at the The civilization and fandom wiki and There's a link in the show notes for that You might want to book mark that page for future reference Also, you want to know what to expect concerning your opponents in a game leader You don't have a choice of leaders when you choose the empire you get the leader that comes with it But these leaders are distinct in various ways To see what I mean go to the leader page for one by clicking on the link under the leader picture and you'll see a long list of AI traits These describe and numerical terms how competitive the leader is in various ways How prone to war which kind of units it will build and so on? It's a long list so your eyes may glaze over but the significance is that it gives you some insight If this leader is one of your opponents in a game This list is how the AI is programmed There is also a more approachable summary under personality and behavior And for example, here's what it says about Pedro the second of Brazil Pedro will most commonly try for a cultural victory if he pursues a different victory condition He's likely to choose the diplomatic one over a scientific or domination victory And in fact the last game he was my competitor for A diplomatic victory and we'll be talking about that shortly Pedro is exceptionally friendly and loyal and will readily befriend anyone But the most warlike leaders He is more willing to denounce than to wage war himself But will maintain a defensive militia comprised of a variety of units He also has the habit of building a fairly large navy Fittingly Pedro's highest priority is the happiness of his people Followed by the development of his lands and culture He will not claim a large territory but his cities will be highly populated and the land and water around them will be full of improvements He will sometimes try to build wonders that enhances culture and tourism output Now Pedro is friendly toward city states and his sphere of influence and will often pledge to protect them He will hardly ever attack or bully them Now the point is this describes your AI opponent If you choose to play as Pedro of Brazil you can make entirely different decisions from what the AI would do Now starting bias each empire will spawn on the map in ways that reflect their starting bias if any Some empires for instance china friends Have no starting bias at all which means they can spawn anywhere on the map Though there is programming to ensure that the location is not a disaster like all tundra and ice or the middle of the ocean So it will certainly be playable Still some players like to try two three or four times to spawn to see if they can get a good place to start For the empires with the starting bias it can be either positive or negative For example the Mongolian empire has a bias towards starting on planes Which makes sense historically since they come from the planes of central Asia The Russian empire has a bias to start in tundra which again seems to fit The song high empire has a negative starting bias which is to avoid tundra Now the song high emperor empire Historically was an empire in sub-saharan Africa so this kind of makes sense The signemies empire avoids forests Rome and shashone Empires have no starting bias at all they could spawn anywhere So the starting bias will apply to whichever empire you choose to play So if you prefer not to play with a lot of tundra you would do well not to choose Russia But then again Russia can do more with tundra than some other empires might so it does all balance out Then there's unique ability Generally speaking each empire will have a unique ability For example the Austrian empire has the unique ability called diplomatic marriage Which allows them to spend gold to annex or puppet any city state if an ally do for at least five turns If the city state is annexed it becomes part of the Austrian empire But if it is puppeted the city state technically remains separate But it's under the control in some ways of the Austrian empire and what that really means is that You control all of the units they have but you don't control the build cues So you can't tell the city state if it's puppet and what to do India has a unique ability called population growth This doubles the unhappiness caused by more cities But reduces by 50% the unhappiness caused by increased population So if you were playing India it is even more important to build tall rather than wide Remember when we talk about tall versus wide wide is many cities Each of somewhat smaller size tall is a few cities with a very high population Now unique units Every empire has at least one and sometimes two unique units These units replace a normal unit but are a little better in some respects There worth having some are more useful than others and the key factors when are they available to you For example the Celtic empire gets the Pictish warrior which replaces the spearmen Since the spearman is generally the first unit you learn to build it comes very early in the game So if you're interested in the strategy of early warfare this might matter to you The Pictish warrior is actually weaker than the spearman in one respect though in that it gets no bonus against mounted units So if you are the calts and you're facing the Mongols you're gonna have a problem But the Pictish warrior can pillage without any movement cost normally when you use a unit to pillage it ends your turn But a Pictish warrior could pillage and then move if it still had movement left And the Pictish warrior also has the foreign lands bonus which gives it a 20% bonus when fighting outside of Celtic territory And finally the Pictish warrior gets a faith bonus when it fills an enemy unit equal to 50% of the killed units strength Now the American empire has two unique units One is the B17 bomber which replaces the regular bomber it comes with two promotions siege one and a vision and it's slightly stronger 70 versus 65 The problem with this is that it comes so late in the game it's hard to see what good it will do you If you're pursuing a domination strategy you should have already gone most of the way to conquering the world before you actually get the B17 Now the other unique unit the Americans get is the minute man which replaces the musket man It comes with a drill one promotion Ignores terrain restrictions and it's points towards a golden age. This is more useful than the B17 But not useful enough to push you towards a domination victory in my opinion But since you need good units for any strategy if only for defense it's worth halfing Personally if I was playing as the Americans I would probably choose to go for a science victory I think they're very well suited to that Now unique buildings and improvements Some empires such as the Byzantines or the Japanese do not have one but they can be useful For example the Portuguese empire has a unique building called the phytoria Which has the interesting property of being built outside portugal's territory The phytoria which becomes available once you're discovering navigation can be built in the territory of a coastal city state on a coastal land tile that has no resources on it and Has three properties First one Portugal gets one copy of each luxury resource the city state has This is great for either increasing happiness or is something that can be traded with other empires Then there is a plus 50% defensive strength bonus for any combat units on the tile And if the Fritoria is pillaged that constitutes an active war against Portugal Which means Portugal gets no penalties for going to war Now another example of a unique Building or improvement is the Dutch Polter which can be built on any marsh or flood plain tile It gives plus three food and once you discover economics it will also yield plus one production and plus one gold So in summary if you study the chart of empires that can help you to picking strategies for the empire You're playing or help you to pick an empire that is well suited to the strategy you want to try And knowing how the AI is programmed for other empires helps you to know what to expect in your game But here are some suggestions and note that you can win with any save But these are ones that lend themselves to a particular strategy That said, I usually let the game give me a random choice and then formulate my strategy when I see what I get So for domination Germany japan Rome Sun high and the Mongols All very well suited to Domination victories science victory Babylon, Korea, Poland and America are all very good for that Culture victories Brazil, Polynesia, Poland and France are all good for that Diplomatic victories Greece, Arabia and Portugal are very well suited to diplomatic victories So with this this is a hookah for Hacker public radio signing off and as always encouraging you to support free software Bye bye You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org. Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording podcast, click on our upload link to find out how easy it is. Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an AnHonestHost.com, the Internet Archive, rsync.net, and our mirror network. Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.