So, I played the demo for Civ5 (game hasn't unlocked for me yet) and I was wondering if anyone has some strategies that they've developed to take into account the changes that the game presents. For example: During the demo, I attacked a city state with 5 units (1 warrior, 2 hoplites, and 2 archers in what I figured wasn't a terrible formation) and was unsuccessful at conquering it. Anything that works particularily well?  
 
As well, I was wondering about buying land tiles. I can see the benefit to buying tiles to get access to resources, but what other purpose would buying tiles serve? Other than perhaps blocking off routes for your competitors or connecting your different cities together, I don't see buying tiles important beyond that. Would a cities' growth be halted if the culture wasn't enough on its own to expand borders? I had heard that other cities couldn't be taken over by culture a la Civ4 so I guess my question is: Does buying up a whole bunch of tiles around a city serve a purpose? 
 
What victories have you gotten and what have you done to get there? I played a little Civ4 recently to get me in the Civ mindset but with so many changes I'm wondering what people are doing differently now.

Buying tiles is useful if a city is starving and you can grab a few tiles worth of food to remedy that.  
 
As for attacking cities, if you have the city surrounded, the city itself can only attack one unit each turn.  It seems also that it will prioritize attacking ranged units.  So if you bring an archer unit in range and set it to fortify until healed, you might be able to keep the city barraging that unit for enough turns to alternate attacking and healing with your other units to bring it down. 

Yesterday I finished my first game of Civ 5*. I went with the default settings (continents/small/chieftain) and won via domination. Resources were the only reason I bought tiles (iron & horses early on). It seems catapults are the best way to go if you want to attack cities in the early game. Later on crossbowmen can get a bonus vs. cities, but by the end of the game I was doing fine with just riflemen. 
 
A side note, in the aforementioned game I didn't really see any benefit to attacking city-states. I'm not even sure there is one, unless you really need your own city there. The benefits from being friends seems just as good, especially if you're going for a cultural victory. 
 
* (actually the first game of Civ I've ever finished, despite having bought Civ 3 and 4)

Domination victory seems strangely easy in Civ 5, particularly as Germany (on Prince, at least). WIth the prevalence of barbarian camps you can just build one extra warrior, run around the map recruiting barbarians in the early game, and before long you have a free army and a bunch of extra gold to just go stomp your closest neighbour. Wih that second capital city so early in the game, it's almost hard not to win.
 
For general city attack tactics, I have 2 tips. Get a melee unit with the medic promotion and put it up close to the city. The extra healing will basically nullify any damage the city can do. Second, don't attack city-states until you have seige weapons. They're much stronger than most capital cities even, and will beat the shit out of any ancient era units.

If you want to take out city-states early game, set up your ranged units and melee units just outside of them. Have at least 2 or three ranged units pecking away at the city till it gets about half way taken. Then send in your melee units to clean it up.
 
Aside from that focus on economic research and buildings early on, lots of money can go a long way to securing domination and the ability to simply buy what you want. It is hilarious to go to war with someone and buy out the city states around them and watch as they are attacked by their former allies.

Yeah, on chieftain you can probably anything, and still win. Certainly catapults and swordsmen are the way to go, but they need iron. Just bring the city down 1-2 turns with ranged units and then attack. Bringing a Great General also helps a lot! Its a lot about terrain though. Try to get promotions from barbarians for open and rough terrain on separate units, use the appropriate. Such specializing seems to be incredibly useful.
 
Buying tiles is mostly for getting resources and preventing the enemy from getting them. Also you can make "spikes" leading to the enemy territory and then culture bomb them (Great Artist)

"

  
So, I played the demo for Civ5 (game hasn't unlocked for me yet) and I was wondering if anyone has some strategies that they've developed to take into account the changes that the game presents. For example: During the demo, I attacked a city state with 5 units (1 warrior, 2 hoplites, and 2 archers in what I figured wasn't a terrible formation) and was unsuccessful at conquering it. Anything that works particularily well?

"

Im still waiting for the game to unlock but I played the demo a lot. On Prince I could take all the capitals on the greek island (the same as a tiny map maybe?) 
 
I beelined for horseback riding, started with a scout/worker build, had 3 or 4 companion cavalry by turn 50ish, and knocked down 3 capitals by turn 75. It seems like 4 cavalry was the magic number for knocking down a city quickly
 
Thats my strategy - kill them as quick as they can before they kill you :) then go up a difficulty

I'm just about to win my first game. Tech victory. I started off really tech heavy until I realized I was miles ahead of all the other civilizations. At that point I just said screw it and took out the two nearest empires with about five units and two generals. Got a lot of extra income from that that I then used to build a lot of production-increasing buildings so I could bang our the spaceship parts as fast as possible.

The great generals are crazy good.  The bonuses they give let a small force of crossbowen take down a whole civ.  With the AI in its current state, I don't ever see myself sacrificing them to build a citadel.  Ever.

Rapid expansion is always the way to go. Land = Power.

@cday130: 
Yeah, I figured working with a city state is better than conquering it. I was going after it simply because a rival city state wanted it done. 
 
Another  quick question. If a city state asks you to take out a rival city state, will installing a puppet ruler count as taking it out? Or will you simply have to conquer it?

"

@cday130: 
Yeah, I figured working with a city state is better than conquering it. I was going after it simply because a rival city state wanted it done. 
 
Another  quick question. If a city state asks you to take out a rival city state, will installing a puppet ruler count as taking it out? Or will you simply have to conquer it?

"

" Rapid expansion is always the way to go. Land = Power. "

I don't have a set strategy in my Civilization games, nor am I proclaiming that I am some sort of professional. I enjoy adapting my playstyle to the situation at hand, and working from there. Makes all my games different.

" @Meteora said:

" Rapid expansion is always the way to go. Land = Power. "

unless you want to win via culture, then you just get 3-4 cities "

" @Meteora said:

" Rapid expansion is always the way to go. Land = Power. "

unless you want to win via culture, then you just get 3-4 cities "

Maybe it was a mistake going Prince difficulty on an Earth-sized map and Epic length on my first Civ game ever. Oh well, I'm learning the hard way what not to do.
 
Anyway, since I didn't know anything about Civ starting out (and still don't), I didn't really have a strategy. I just started playing the game and paying attention to the tooltips and sorta started naturally expanding. Maybe it's because of the game length I'm playing on, but I'm on turn 250-ish and I just made it into the Medieval Age...that's with about four hours of play. I just started buying tiles here and there, and establishing trade routes between my three cities, and I even annexed an annoying city-state who was sitting on some prime horse real estate I needed to get my hands on. All seemed well, then the Queen of England got pissed off so I told her to go pound sand down a rathole. Save game, will come back to this over the weekend!

Now that I've had a little time to explore the world of Civ, I've taken the strategy of queuing up buildings and wonders to build and buying workers and settlers when I get the money. I have a few roving units that take out barbarians (best thing ever is having your scout find an ancient ruins that gives you a weapons upgrade....instant archer).  
 
Germany was to the north of me and Persia to the south. They must have had a secret pact because they declared war on me at the same time. I was able to defend my 4 cities easily by placing units on the other side of rivers and letting them come to me. Now I'm going to start building a few catapults and pikemen to punish these guys. 
 
This game is so addictive.

Pick japan. Get Steel- Train 5 samurai. Take over whoevers your enemy

" @Red12b yeah, s lot. My new foreign policy for city-states that don't like me is to burn them to the ground. I'll add you on Steam. "

" Strategy B:
1. choose Japan
2. tech to Samurai
3. rape and pillage your neighbors  "

" How do you guys handle the upkeep of a large army?  I think my problem is I want to build every building in every city so the buidling upkeep gets stupid crazy.  Say you had five cities and you had military agressive civs next to you, what would you build in each city? "

"

  
So, I played the demo for Civ5 (game hasn't unlocked for me yet) and I was wondering if anyone has some strategies that they've developed to take into account the changes that the game presents. For example: During the demo, I attacked a city state with 5 units (1 warrior, 2 hoplites, and 2 archers in what I figured wasn't a terrible formation) and was unsuccessful at conquering it. Anything that works particularily well?  
 
As well, I was wondering about buying land tiles. I can see the benefit to buying tiles to get access to resources, but what other purpose would buying tiles serve? Other than perhaps blocking off routes for your competitors or connecting your different cities together, I don't see buying tiles important beyond that. Would a cities' growth be halted if the culture wasn't enough on its own to expand borders? I had heard that other cities couldn't be taken over by culture a la Civ4 so I guess my question is: Does buying up a whole bunch of tiles around a city serve a purpose? 
 
What victories have you gotten and what have you done to get there? I played a little Civ4 recently to get me in the Civ mindset but with so many changes I'm wondering what people are doing differently now.

"

...is it better to fully control everything or auto it?