1) you can "capture" the villages scattered all over the place at the beginning of civ. You get sporebucks or sometimes a free vehicle. Though sometimes they will attack your vehicle

2) near the end of civ, spend your money on improving all of your cities to the max. The money won't transfer to space stage, but anything you build will.

I'm having absolute misery at the civilization stage. I've got a military society and a religious society both at the civilian stage and have basically ended up with 2 cities for each and another faction controls every other city on the map. Is there any way to force it to return to beginning to give me another chance to do better? Even getting beaten just returns me to last save ... which leaves me horribly outgunned and hopeless as far as I can see. If I even try to take over another city, the other faction just sends tons of airships to blast me to kingdom come. At the moment they are my "friendly" status but is there any hope for my two civilizations???

I'd recommend quietly sitting back and stocking up on cash, Mesher69. Then, make an ally (green smiley) with the largest civ on the map. If you get the rest of them at least to blue, they won't attack you first.

Once you get enough cash, convert some of your buildings into extra houses. This will let you build extra vehicles.

Take EVERY SINGLE ONE of your vehicles and rush the smallest, weakest civ on the map. If they have more than one city, pay your ally to attack one while you attack another.

You don't have to conquer everyone, because your ally will eventually merge when there's no one left. Also, if your ally is mil/rel, they'll also be taking over cities on their own; instead of paying them to help you, you could watch for an opportunity to help them (which is cheaper.)

Even if you don't take any more cities, and your ally gets them all, you'll win in the end when that ally joins you.

Well at the point I'm at, there's only 1 other civilation left and he has every other city besides mine... and we're at yellow "friend level" I've tried bribing and so on.. but nothing seems to budge the points for friendship any higher.

Well, if you've attacked him at all, you may end up with a pretty bad negative relationship penalty. Gifts will only get you so far, then the points cap.

And without an economic city, you can't trade with him... I dunno, I've never finished the game with one civ that wasn't ally before.

If you have to take him militarily, start out the same way (get rich while you wait for the time to strike.) Then, take over his spice geysers. Not only will this cripple his economy, but he'll divert vehicles to take out the ones going after his geysers. I'd use religious vehicles for this, perhaps edited for high speed and religious power. Next, find the weakest city on the map, with the lowest defense rating, and rush it with everything you have. Use your religious vehicles to subdue his defenses and your military ones on the city hall itself. Save a few airplanes for skirmishing his defending vehicles.

Dunno if that'll work foolproof, and it might take some time, but if you can't make him your ally you'll have to conquer him.

The ideal stat distribution for all economic vehicles is 0% health, 44% economic power, 56% speed. Technically it should be 43.75% economic power and 56.25% speed but 44/56 is the best you can do to my knowledge. This applies to all economic vehicles. Also in terms of profit, air > sea > land. The justification for this requires calculus and I really don't feel like typing that out.

If i'm a military civilization I like to wait until I have captured enough cities and then nuke everyone else with the ICBM's. It really makes things easier.

mesher69 wrote:Well at the point I'm at, there's only 1 other civilation left and he has every other city besides mine... and we're at yellow "friend level" I've tried bribing and so on.. but nothing seems to budge the points for friendship any higher.

Remember, if you havent started the game AT the civilization stage, you can use "abilities" (the F1 through F4 buttons) to quickly end most fights, improve your standing with another civ, take over a single city, or end the whole game.

Depending on which route you went, try using those abilities listed there to end any fight that might come your way, or prevent one all togeather.

Dont use one to cap a city yet until you do the following : Max out all cities you own with factories and houses, and leave at least 1 point in city happiness. Remember that refunding buildings only gives you half of the purchase cost. Also, the city hall counts as a house, so try to center your entertainment/factory buildings adjacent to it. This will allow you to gain cash very quickly, even if you dont own very many spice resources. But this will leave you vulnerable to religous attack, so watch out.

If you do start the fight, be sure that you have the enemy "where you want them" before you use an ability like any bombs (carnivore/predator//omnivore/adaptable) on the enemy when they approach a target en mass. Use herbivore/social abilities to prevent a fight, or heal a badly damaged group.

The computer AI is usually single minded about where they will attack initially, sending all troops to one location. But it lacks the ability to use special skills like your F1 through F4 button, so use those to your advantage.

Don't use nukes or big bombs to wipe a city out, unless you don't care about having you're building slots hindered. Even if your home planet is utterly useless for producing spice in the space stage (or maybe it's just a corruption in my game only), you can still sell the buildings. If you just want to have fun, then go ahead and nuke it all to kingdom come, lol.

Tips for non-economical carnivores. Only played on easy mode, but i am sure it will apply on any setting with minor tweaks.

Pause when civ stage starts.
Design cars with 100% speed.
Build 3 extra cars (max which you can make with money you given at the start, at least on easy).
Capture all geysers.

by then, you get some free cash available again. Redesign cars to be 70%offence/30%speed. Note that no health needed. As carnivore, you get ability to make your vehicles invulnerable. It only costs 2k and by the time you need it for the next fight its almost always recharged.

Build up cities to produce max $$$ with 0-2 happy face.

Move to capture cities, swarm them with 6+ cars while dropping invulnerability drone right after start of the fight. By the time it kicks in, one of your vehicles will be down to half health but you should not loose any. Add more cars as possible to speed up process.

Move to port city as soon as possible to get access to ships. Build couple with 100% speed. Before taking out any port city, make sure you station ships around their sea geysers to catch them before others do.

Once you have 4 cities, recycle cars and build planes. Same story as before, invulnerability is almost like cheating, specially for religious nation because they convert so fast with no collateral damage. Keep couple ships until you take all the geysers over and all port cities then recycle them.

Swarm of 70% power/30% speed planes will convert/take-over city quick enough for invulnerability to last. Quickly move from one city to another disregarding on ownership only making sure you are working towards having 40k in credits. Once you take 6rth city, initiate 4th ability to end the game.

Max out your placement of buildings and turrets in all your cities before going on to space, as it costs money to do so in either stage, but your civ stagee money doesn't carry over.

It's worth taking your first steps slowly. Pause, make commands, unpause, and pause again to issue new commands.
Start of with +3 new land vehicles (focus on speed now, you can always select another design and all your vehicles will swap). Note all tribe and spice locations on continent. Split all 4 land vehicles up and let them cap (unpause). Some tribes may give you some bonus sporebucks or even a vehicle (which only speeds things up during your initial expansion phase, and can be sold off later if it does not fit into your main strategy). Capture all spice geysers on your continent and all the tribes that you can loot from. If your city is a habour city, quickly grab a speedy sea vehicle and start grabbing up the offshore spice. Maximize income from cities whenever possible, but be a good judge. If a city looks easy to attack/convert go ahead and spend the money on the vehicles. You will soon be earning income from their city too. Once you have total dominance over your starting continent (~4 cities), you have already won 80% of the game. Sell all your land vehicles and invest heavily on sea/air. Continue strategy on neighbouring continent(s) and once you have 6 nations, you can use the super weapon to capture all cities (sell your remaining vehicles, or even a couple of buildings to if you have to), unless you are going for the 8+ similar cities achievements, then capture each one manually. With your current financial strength that should not be a problem, especially for military/religious. Basically after you get your first few cities and have them all set up right (have at least 1 happiness for each and maximize income. Happy cities may start celebrating 24/7 giving you double the income), you can do whatever you want.

For economic: Trade, trade, trade.
If trade is refused, or if relationships turn sour, spend your entire fortune on bribes. You'll be glad you did so. You can win even if you do not buy out all cities by being allied to the only other nation remaining. Do not refuse larger nations (especially military), and pay minimally for buying small underperforming cities. One tip is to contact (satellite dish icon) every city and praise them to get a slight boost in relations.

For military: People aren't gonna like you.
But that doesn't mean you have to like them. Be aggressive. Take that spice geyser by force. Don't worry about offending other nations, because they can't beat you. Strike before they expand, and expand on their bases. Don't forget to build on cities that you have captured.

For religious: You have arguably the coolest stuff, so use them.
You have the power to capture cities AND retain all their buildings. Use large armies to swarm and focus on cities one at a time (except when going against small and especially defenseless and unhappy cities). Attack in groups large enough and you'll find little to no losses at all. Be as aggressive as military, if not more aggressive than military. Ignore defenses/vehicles and go straight in and convert. You get to project holograms of yourself, so enjoy. Tip: You are the only type that can ignore epics. Use your vehicles on the epic and turn him into a cuddly gigantic plaything.

That said I feel that the easiest to play is religious, and the enormous musical instruments and holographic projections are just some of the many bonuses. Military is simple enough, but don't forget to rebuild. For economic, everything costs some, but trade routes allow you to gain sporebucks too so it all works out. Just be more careful who you are working with and make the right friends. A few gifts won't hurt either.

Oh and in this stage, epics are ANNOYING. This is not [s]terrible[/s] tribal stage. Ignore at all costs. Take a detour to that spice geyser. Economic is especially defenseless, and having turrets on your cities may actually lure an epic to cause epic damage on your structures. Even for religious, the epic pet is pretty useless and hard to get rid off. Once the charm wears off, it will start attacking again, and you will have to keep him in check with your preaching and songs again. It's just not worth it.

Using my strategy guarantees for the Rolling Thunder achievement (assuming v1.01). It takes 20~40mins tops, even in hard mode.

Has anyone played the Civ stage on hard since the patch? It seems that the balance of power has been drasticly skewed towards the AI, since they seem to start with 5+ vehicles, make money at a much faster rate than I do, and my rate of earning is much slower than in normal. Not to mention that all 9 other cities are founded as soon as I claim my first geyser, if not sooner. I hadn't tried to play this stage on hard before the patch, so I don't know if it was overbalanced when they increased the difficulty. Has anyone who completed the civ stage on hard before the patch and played it afterwards tell me how much of a difficulty increase there actually was?

Much appreciated.

Seliam wrote:Has anyone played the Civ stage on hard since the patch? It seems that the balance of power has been drasticly skewed towards the AI, since they seem to start with 5+ vehicles, make money at a much faster rate than I do, and my rate of earning is much slower than in normal. Not to mention that all 9 other cities are founded as soon as I claim my first geyser, if not sooner. I hadn't tried to play this stage on hard before the patch, so I don't know if it was overbalanced when they increased the difficulty. Has anyone who completed the civ stage on hard before the patch and played it afterwards tell me how much of a difficulty increase there actually was?

Much appreciated.

Yeah, I played my first civ stage post-patch today. It was moderatly more difficult, but then I was playing economic, so I had "please dont beat me up" lunch money out the yin-yang. Iv always found the military route the hardest unless against an economic civ because of religious civs area-damage to tanks, but as far as economic strategy goes, yeah, it is more difficult after the patch than before.

It is easier to make the other major powers angry, so if you arent by the sea with access to more than one player at a time to make friends with, the island battle can be very very tough if you are against more than one military city.

As always, it is best to boot-strap the economy before heading into battle, rushing will not help in this game difficulty, no matter what type of civ you are.

You also need to be a fast clicker, and constantly on the move & watching what is going on. Also, it is also more opportune to vary your city types and building layouts, where as on easy and medium you can feel free to go all religious/military/economic, and not over worry about the buildings.


In a sense, it is actually "hard" now.


Id also reccomend, if you are not sure just how difficult it can be compared to your skill (talking to other forum readers here), save as soon as you set up your building designs, vehicle designs, anthem if you have that, civ clothing, and building layout, and dont save again until you are in a moderate-to-good position to win the planet. You'll definatly want that save file to fall back on should you make some wrong moves.


Hard, but not impossible. Dont let the suggestions fool you, it is beatable. I got the "Rolling Thunder" achievement off of it today so it isnt overwhelming, just be sure you have the medium difficulty down before you try.

Good luck!



Edit1:

I have a question for those here, today I ran into an issue where I finished the Civ stage with an economic alignment, but I was rewarded a military trait card. I belive this is related to the number and type of cities you own at completion. Can anyone confirm this senario? (I do not have a screen shot sadly, I quit and reloaded the game to a previous save point without thinking about the strangeness, to change my space trait card).

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karatta wrote:
I have a question for those here, today I ran into an issue where I finished the Civ stage with an economic alignment, but I was rewarded a military trait card. I belive this is related to the number and type of cities you own at completion. Can anyone confirm this senario? (I do not have a screen shot sadly, I quit and reloaded the game to a previous save point without thinking about the strangeness, to change my space trait card).

Pretty sure that is not the case. For all my games in the Civ stage I've played based on a focused single-minded strategy, that is, based on the type of nation I have, and for all my timelines, they have straight lines throughout despite having cities not belonging to my main type (mostly from super weapon captures).

I also noted that getting into bad relationships, starting wars, killing off enemy unit, using multiple vehicle types (religious/miltary/economic), attacking/converting/starting trade routes with cities do not affect my time line at all. I suspect only captures (based on type of capture) do affect, so if you accidentally attacked a city using a group of military vehicles while being an economic nation will not cause your timeline to slide towards the military trait unless you have captured the city via military means. I cannot confirm because the "free vehicles" (gained by capturing tribes) are unlikely to reach a group large enough to start capturing cities, and I'm lazy to build up say, a military army as a religious nation, but it seems logical.

Edit: Confirmed.
I started a new economic game and quickly bought out a small religious city, which after I maxed out the space building (I should have built all houses, but it was just so habitual to maximize income), giving me allowance to have 4 religious vehicles. In the next few seconds, I had a religious capture! I then proceeded to check the timeline and noticed my timeline had leapt on to the edge of economic and almost into religious. In fact, the arrow was practically pointed on the border between the two traits. The only way I could tell was the lighted economic trait. So unless someone else has any new findings, it is safe to assume that only captures count towards affecting your trait, not city type or even anything else.