It was my impression that buying something had nothing to do with production. At least it never seems cheaper to buy something that is half way produced than one that is new.
As such I assumed a purchase just hands you the item and your production merrily ticks along.
I could be wrong though (kinda hope I am…I miss hurrying production).
Civilopedia says that you can switch production and it will “remember” the other production, but that the progress gradually gets reduced the longer you don’t switch back to the original thing.
Is there any way to see what wonders the other civs are working on? After spending 20 turns of production on a wonder only to have it snatched out from under you - do you just lose everything entirely? Wasted effort?
Not that I’ve seen. You don’t even get ‘Roger the Great has started work on the Great Wall!’. My solution is to be so far ahead (marble + aristocracy + farmed plains means Delhi has almost a dozen wonders now).
ETA: you’re supposed to get some portion of your production back in gold. The manual/civilopedia is delightfully vague about how much though. Par for the course for the documentation for this game. Bah.
This has happened to me so many times now I have lost count. Drives me batty!
Someone built Ankor Wat literally the turn before I did. I was so close I actually thought the Ankor Wat message was for me. Then I noted Ankor Wat was actually sitting outside another civilization’s city.
Pissed me off so much I attacked that city and took it. 
In Civ IV opposing civilizations that happen to have open borders with you spy on your wonder production, they crunch the numbers and then build their own a turn before you do if they can.
A possible solution to the ‘Civ V’s AI sucks’ problem.
I wish the cities were stronger for attack. I don’t like the fact that a city can’t destroy a barbarian in less than five turns.
Losing out on a wonder, you do get cash in compensation but it’s not much. I think it’s probably equivalent to having spent those turns producing wealth.
Switching production, the stored production does slowly degrade. It’s necessary to stop exploits.
I agree with this and I say that both as an attacker and a defender. I think cities should be more dangerous.
While I agree the AI does many dumb moves it does, on occasion, show flashes of brilliance.
Several times now I have nearly wiped out a unit and been damaged to do so but figure next round I’ll get him. The AI then uses a heal to full buff and blammo…fuckers are stomping me.
In another fun one (although it sucked for me but still fun) I was rolling up Egypt. They were not easy but I was clearly making steady progress.
All of a sudden Egypt made friends with a neutral (to me) city state on the other side of my Empire. They declared war and all my stuff was light years away on the other side of the map. Luckily I had a few units done cooking but Egypt utterly stopped my advance because I had to go deal with the new threat (frigging city state had a pile of riflemen just hanging around). The city-state took the nearest city but I got it back 3 turns later when my stuff finally showed.
Now I have to kill the city-state and then move everything back to get Egypt.
Brilliant (or blind luck) move from the AI as it gave it many, many turns to recoup.
I suspect it will be dumb about that but still…loved it even while I was yelling “OMFG!” at my monitor.
On the flip side the AI rolled arty right up next to my riflemen and lost its turn so insane idiocy (I had several units there attacking so not like it was a surprise they were there).
Around 1910 now…hope I can finish Egypt off in time. They are currently ahead of me it seems.
It looks like, ironically, I’m heading for a domination victory with Ghandi. I’ve almost ended up in this situation by accident. Basically I was on a big continent with four other players, two of which were being quite difficult with me. One I took a big bite out of and then another had reached a point where it had expanded quite far and looked dangerous, so I had to take them on too whilst they were diplomatically isolated (no-one else liked them).
Eventually the grief I got from taking them out made me realise it was just better to kill off all the other civs on this continent. Now there are two other civs out of three who have their capitals and I have a big tech lead, so it makes sense to just go for the capitals - as it’s been pointed out, the AI doesn’t particularly sensibly defend itself in this respect.
Riddle me this:
When I was attacking an Egyptian city he was shooting at me three times from the city. At first I thought he was somehow swapping units in and out so I moved a unit around the city to block that but nothing was there. After I took the city (read that again…I was in his city) on the computer turn a cannon unit of his pops out of the city and runs away. Neat trick and I’d like to know how to do it.
Also, I noted when one of my units went through Beijing (which I captured long ago) it cost a full movement point to go through (essentially every unit had to stop in Beijing on the way through). Is that supposed to happen? Do I need to build a bypass?
Really? I disagree, an early assault on rival Civs should be a viable strategy (especially since a few civs get their best units on the get-go) if the cities were any stronger everyone would just turtle until catapults. Although it takes 5 turns to destroy a Brute at least he can’t sack your city like Civ IV. Pillaged improvements aren’t so bad, it doesn’t take workers very long to repair them, but if you’re really worried about it defend the town with your starting warrior.
I think taking cities is far too easy.
In my last game I got my starting unit buffed twice (to pikemen) by finding villages. He soloed Beijing (Chinese capital) and sacked it. Put China out of the game and the game had barely begun.
Mind you it is not so much about me losing cities but more I think they should be more challenging to kill. Most city damage is pretty pathetic. I once had a city to over 100 defense and it still was not overly dangerous to an invader. Sting a bit but nothing to be fussed about.
A few expansions down the road, after theres a good Final Frontier mod (hopefully) and when IF I get a more powerful computer for some reason… I’ll get this. Until then, I’m hoping someone installs it on the computers in the break room at work.
The defending unit probably had a double-fire promotion, but no one can say without seeing the save file.
You crossed a river.
And yeah, the goal was to prevent cities from being one-warrior captured, not to let you get away with not building an army. Their strength is fine or maybe even too high.
The unit was on a road the whole way though.
At work so I can’t check but I think the city is one hex away from the bridge.
The game had me go to the edge of the city and stop.
Enter the city and stop.
Leave the city and move fast.
On roads the whole way.
Roads don’t have bridges until you get… construction? engineering? One of those types of techs. You may already have that, but I figured I’d point it out if this is happening in early game.
Yeah…already had bridges. This happened in 1870(ish) game time. Doubt you can get that far without bridges.
I was telling my GF the other day how Gandhi in Civilization blows my mind as one of the most blood thirsty rulers out there (at least in Civ Revolutions and IIRC Civ IV). I thought the rulers were supposed to loosely (very loosely) adhere to the people they were in life so Genghis Khan would be all about conquering stuff and Gandhi would be building a peaceful society.
Glad to see I am not the only one who noticed this:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/8161-Critical-Miss-39 