The more I play the more I like it, but the more I play the more I’m convinced that the new civics system is probably a mistake; it’s essentially just another tech tree (as others have already pointed out) and it’s totally disconnected from the real tech tree. I would have preferred an expansion of the Civ IV system where technologies unlocked civic options, which wasn’t perfect - some options were just never even worth bothering with - but was more interesting from a making-choices point of view. Culture is now just an accumulation of the civics. You’d add to the fun even just buy allowing the player to buy hexes with culture (a logical choice, when you think about how borders are determined anyway) which would force you to pick between faster civic advancement and grabbing land. Anyway, that’s my big beef.
I don’t miss religion. It’s still a good concept, but as implemented in Civ IV it was, practically speaking, The Race To Hinduism With Buddhism As a Consolation Prize; whoever got one of those two had a huge advantage over other religion-founders.
And I don’t miss espionage at all, which I always thought was a pure irritation and a distraction from really playing the game.
I was going to complain about the lack of the gold/research/culture slider but then I found out that many basic buildings allow you to reallocate citizens from field work to specific types of production, which makes the buildings much more interesting and gives you similar control.
That should be an easy thing to mod, though. The buying tiles with culture instead of cash thing, I mean.
I don’t think the way religion itself was handled was all that problematic - yeah, you got a bit more free money and free spying by getting the early ones, but if all you were after were the happy bonus aspect of religion then Judaism, Taoism or even Christianity was OK. Fuck Islam though, real dead end
Besides, rushing the early religions meant not going for bronze working/tile improvements, which came with its own problems.
What really messed up religion though was the diplomatic aspect, specifically the huge benefit to being the same religion as everyone else, and the huge gaping drawback of being the only catholic out there (i.e. getting dogpiled to shit by Isabella’s Buddha League). Removing or at least making religion a very trivial part of diplomacy would have solved many issues with it IMO.
Incidentally, I’m currently playing on a standard sized map and it just seems huge. Well past 0 AD, the great majority of what I can scout out is still untouched by the major civs.
I agree that the game seems to move, well, slowly; on a standard map I’d guess maybe a third of it, tops, is in use. I’m expanding reasonably quickly and have 7 cities and I’m a tiny fraction of the world’s surface.
Marathon speed at least is kind of weird. For most of my game so far, I could never have enough production, and buildings took around 40 turns or more to build, while most units took over 30. Now my industrial revolution is in full swing; the combination of better lumber mills, factories (good value for rush building), and rail connection make a huge difference. Oh, and taking the Order civics down to Communism, too. At that point, earlier buildings become more reasonable, so I finally get around to building workshops and windmills. In other words, production boosts come very quickly in the industrial era. I’m in the early modern era now, and only the newest, biggest buildings (like hydro dams) take 23-32 turns. I’m now building opera houses and museums where before I didn’t feel like I could afford the time to build a monument.
I think a few play-throughs are needed to develop an eye for good city sites. Lumber mills seem more useful than mines, and a river seems like kind of a big deal once you can build hydro dams. It seems odd that all cities except for your capital can get the rail connection bonus; I’m used to my capital being my super-city.
Sorry, I should have clarified- I realise you can escort settlers and workers, but from what I can tell, though, you can’t escort “embarked” units- which are completely defenceless, even though on land they might be a Knight or a Cannon or something badass.
The propensity of the capital to NOT get bonuses assigned to other cities is, I suspect, an oversight, and I bet it’ll be fixed in some patch.
I fought my first really nasty, large scale war (with Montezuma, OF COURSE, the fucking prick) and I enjoyed it. A lot. So far this is a vastly, vastly better combat system. Ranged attacks don’t make a lot of sense on a map this scale - it’s the equivalent of crossbowmen firing arrows about 150 miles - but it’s turned combat into something you have to plan on the field, not just in the production of superstacks.
What made the war fascinating was that I jumped into an existing war between the Aztecs and Indians. At the most opportune moment I struck, taking advantage of the exposed Aztec strategic flank - his units were strung out along by border moving towards the Indian border, you see - so I could destroy his ranged units. One he rearranged his units it became a tougher fight and I found I didn’t have the strategic reserve to keep charging in, but I took a big city and acheived my strategic goals (1. Keep India alive, and 2. Take that city.) It was a much more interesting war than most Civ wars I’ve fought before.
Having a big chunk of money, brother, that’s what you need.
Finished my third game, still on Prince, and I’m happy I didn’t try a harder difficulty again at the same time as trying for a harder victory type. Planned for a culture victory from day one and played Siam mostly for their lovely Wat UB. Later on I came to realize that their special ability is also exceedingly good when trying for a culture victory and in later parts of the game after I had built a caravel to explore I was constantly allied to 4-5 city states - 1 maritime and the rest cultural.
At one point it felt like I’d never make it in time, but once I noticed Broadcast Towers in the tech tree it started to feel doable. I only had 3 cities, 2 Siam and one annexed Songhai city - the rest were puppet states and I didn’t have that many of those either, so building units was tricky. I ended up straight buying them or getting some from a city state or upgrading my old ones to keep the main cities churning out +culture stuff. My best culture city gave me about +150 culture per turn in the end and I didn’t even have Stonehenge.
Still the AI sillyness whenever there was combat, of course. In late game Russia owned the other continent and sent waves after waves of obsolete units in leaky transports over the Pond for me to use as target practice. I had one Destroyer, one Battleship, one Fighter and one Bomber blocking their way, and those units killed 2-4 Russian boats per turn while Russian Destroyers kept lurking near the Motherland. They didn’t even fire at my Battleship when I went near them. :dubious:
Very different playstyle than going for Dominion victory, even though there still was a lot of warfare. It didn’t really feel like … how should I say this, like a natural way to win. You have to aim for cultural win from 4000 BC right away and even then I only won a bit after 2000 CE. Tech and diplomacy wins look like they’d both be goals you can choose at some point after 1800 AD, and of course dominion victory is at the moment the absolutely easiest way of doing it, achievable as early as your ravening hordes just can manage to find all capitals. I still had fun, though, even if the crappy combat AI irks me slightly more every hour I play.
I had the same and I uninstalled and did a fresh install.
It works fine now.
However, one thing I believe may have caused the issue was that I had the laptop running with Steam open at the same time as the desktop. I believe someone said earlier you can only use one Steam account at a time.
Just completed another game - warlord playing Greece on a diplo victory. A few more things I’ll say having played more:
[ul]
[li]I much, MUCH prefer the pacing in this game to Civ 4, which never seemed right. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly why it’s better, it just feels that it is. I don’t feel that things are going too fast or too slow, or that I’m being ridiculously outpaced by anyone.[/li][li]I’m really loving the combat, it’s a much better mechanic and so many orders of magnitude above “put together a stack of doom and throw it against the enemy’s”. That said I will agree with others that the AI doesn’t play too well in tactical combat, but I haven’t played it on higher difficulties so will withold judgement for now.[/li][li]I definitely don’t have my head fully around a city manaagement strategy yet, hopefully it’ll come.[/li][li]Conversely the leader traits I think add a huge amount to the game and are a far better mechanic than the Civ 4 attribute system[/li][li]I don’t care what anyone says, the social policy system totally roxers my boxers.[/li][li]This game actually makes it desirable for me to pursue a victory. On 4 I’d either be so far out ahead that I couldn’t be bothered to get to victory, or so far behind I’d just give up. Here I feel that victory is worth pursuing and possible to do in a quite straightforward way (note that doesn’t mean easy, rather it’s clearer how it can be achieved).[/li][li]Playing this game has proven to me just how much I hated the Civ 4 economic system - reading strategy guides on the pros and cons of cottage vs specialist economy and when/which circumstances to switch between them just filled me with despair. Now I don’t have to worry about this, as the system in 5 is much simpler. I suspect on higher difficulty settings better thinking on cities and specialisation kicks in.[/li][/ul]
I’m definitely looking forward to some more game tweaks and updates to see if they improve things more, and you know I’ll be getting that expansion on day one!
Or to me more precise how do you manage to do anything once you have conquered cities?
I can capture cities just fine. I whomped Caesar and took three of his cities. That put me in a deep hole with happiness (and I even made one a puppet).
So Caesar figures things look grim and offers me ALL of his cities for peace (kidjanot) except of course the capital. So I take them, I make all of them puppets and my empire happiness plummets to -50!
I just cannot figure how to successfully capture other cities without screwing myself.
I of course try to build courthouses immediately in the captured cities but I cannot purchase them and the damn things invariably take 30+ turns to build in the captured cities.
Sucks.
Trying to keep my Civ in shape and killing only Caesar has taken 85% of the current game I am playing.
And yeah, I build every happiness thing I can in my other cities and those just barely hold the line in my cities, nevermind adding captured ones.
ETA: Anyone know of you capture a capital and make it a puppet will that government vote for you at the UN?
I’m currently on my second successful game (I haven’t won yet, but I’d be amazed if I didn’t), the first half dozen or so were pitiful.
I think I found my favorite Civ to play as: India. I don’t care much for their unit. I rarely build early units, as I’m trying desperately to build my economy and science up. But their power is amazing. It has saved me a huge headache in happiness. I mostly play with a few cities, so only having half population unhappiness really helps.
My current game I ran into a bit of trouble. I was so focused on my own empire that I didn’t notice that the Iroquis were gobbling people up. By the time I paid attention they were already double my size. When they attacked (right after I won a quick war, but my troops were fatigued) I actually lost a city! Unfortunately one of my city-state allies took it back, and razed it. It wasn’t a vital city, but still.
Luckily for me, despite my advisor’s frantic calls for me to sue for peace I was able to fight them to a stalemate. I had a tiny technological lead in my favor, plus a +33% modifier because I was in my own territory.
I just finished my third war and have been able to liberate 2 of my former allied city-states and actually took a couple of cities from them, and razed them out of spite.
What I do is I usually puppet the capital and raze every other city. By the time a courthouse gets built I could have a up and running city of my own in probably a better area. If I don’t feel like doing that I’ll puppet a few cities, but the majority of cities I will burn to the ground.
I noticed the weird peace agreements as well, but they go both ways. I was in a war with Persia. It was a stalemate but then he offered me “generous” peace. I’d give him five of my cities, four of my luxurious resources, a thing of iron, and 50 gold for 45 turns. I was there was a “go to hell” response button.
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
Or to me more precise how do you manage to do anything once you have conquered cities?
[/QUOTE]
It’s easier just to raze them (I don’t even puppet them anymore unless it’s a war in the end game, then I’ll do that). I’ve tried to capture them and then build court houses (as mentioned up thread you can’t buy courthouses, sadly) but it takes forever. Generally it’s better to just raze them and then move a settler unit into the area that best suits a new city.
On my first game on the third or fourth difficulty level, I’m having no trouble leading the game in population, production, army, and every category… except happiness, where I’m last by far. What should I be focusing on? Luxury resources? More happiness buildings?
Luxury resources, by far. Every time you get one you get five extra happiness. I build my happiness buildings one at a time, as needed. The maintenance adds up.
The best idea, though, is to not let your empire get too big. Even a simple 1 pop city is -3 happiness. If it’s a 2 pop, then it’s -4. That adds up quickly.
ETA: Oh, and another negative with courthouses is they’re a flat 5 gold per turn. That’s a lot.
Happiness buildings are the way I go. My problem is with money. My old strategy of building roads and later rail ways everywhere seems to be somewhat flawed, and I find myself constantly running out of money and having to use my Great Artists and such (when I get them) to kick off Golden Ages just to keep my empires solvent.
I think I need to play with less computer players as well…in the later part of the game if I don’t wipe them out they all just pump out boatloads of combat units that flood the game and just bog down my computer so that it’s taking like 2-3 minutes a turn (at least).
Another issue I run into is that even buildings cost strategic resources (as well as some combat units), and I can’t seem to keep up. Stuff like aluminum especially seems critical later in the game and I generally only have one mine (which yields 3), and that just isn’t enough. I haven’t had a lot of luck trading for it with the other nations either.
A good help with that is city-states. If they’re your allies they will automatically give you all of their resources.
But yeah, when I first started I was building roads everywhere, but you don’t need to connect resources, so I only build roads between cities and a choke point, if there is one.
