Tricks and Glitches

Useful hotkeys

741963 - Move unit in directions

F - Fortify/Garrison/Sleep unit

Space - Sleep unit for one turn

B - Build city

F1 - F9 - Various overviews

F10 - Simple visuals

F11 - Quicksave

Home/End - Cycle cities

,/. - cycle units

Control + Space - End turn

Enter - End turn / Close dialogue / Close screen

Generally...

Glitches normally occur when you are doing something the game does not expect you to be doing. One way of doing this is by controlling the game while you are not supposed to be controlling the game, for example when certain screens are open, and keeping these screens open past the time they were meant to be open.

Basically everything that would normally prevent you from ending your turn is controllable via hotkeys except for choosing building production and unit promotions. If save unit promotions is on then having unit promotions available will not prevent you from ending your turn (untested).

Free citizen

If you put all your citizens into unemployment, starve your city once, and reassign your citizens, you will have an additional citizen in your city that does not need food or create unhappiness. The free citizen doesn't give you many beneficial effects, such as research or bonuses provided by social policies based on the number of citizens in your cities, but since it takes no food or happiness you can easily grow your city to replace it.

Peacetime war declaration and Diplomacy camera control

Open the "do you wish to declare war" dialogue by moving a unit into enemy territory. While the dialogue box is up, press F4, click on the enemy and declare war on them, then control the game using hotkeys.

If you then get a message for peace from an enemy, then instead of being in control of your mouse, you will be in control of the diplomacy camera. Additionally, if you make peace by going to them yourself, you can declare war on them without having to wait for 10 turns, by clicking yes on the dialogue box you have kept open this whole time.

https://youtu.be/dcCPX0z8-tA

No unhappiness penalty

If you press the diplomacy screen an instant before pressing a number key to move a unit to capture a city, and trade the city without seeing the popup for annexation/puppeteering/razing for an instant, the popup will sort of be in limbo, and you will no longer gain unhappiness from capturing cities.

Unfortunately, this glitch does not persist through save/load. Because of this I sort of wonder if it could cause desync in multiplayer games, particularly in pitboss mode, but I have never tried it or anything so I don't know.

This glitch is probably even more overpowered than the free citizen one :)

Update gamestate

If you cannot do stuff due to lack of updates ( the game doesn't update when certain screens are open), open and close the civilopedia with F1 and try again.

Controlling the game while annexing

If you cannot control the game while annexing/razing/puppeting a city you can simply press view city. This makes the view city overlay appear, however, which is annoying. To get rid of the view city overlay go to the military overview and click on a unit.

Unit stack with city

If there is a unit on top of one of your cities, and someone is giving you their borders, and you give them your city, then your unit will be on top of the enemy city.

Unit stack with unit

If there is a unit on top of an enemy city, and you order it to swap positions with one of your units, instead your units will stack.

Unit stack with enemy unit

If two units are stacked, and you gift one of them to an enemy, they remain stacked.

No trade during war

Sell per turn items such as luxuries, strategic resources and GPT in exchange for lump gold or cities before declaring war on the AI.