biggest irk - can’t stack workers.
2 horses in use at a time.
Loving the city states and a few of the changes.
Rio De Janeiro, one of the city states I’d allied with was attacked by the French. I didn’t have anything close to them, so I gifted them three units. Rio not only defended themselves, but then they razed the nearest French city and took Paris!
As they now have two cities, the resources I’m getting from them each turn sky rocketed.
One issue I’m having is an unaffiliated city state which has grown large enough to block off my road between my capital and a city. I waged war and took it, but you can’t raze city states, and as it’s in a poor location (off by one hex to get three unused resources).
I’m thinking that if I leave it be…one of the other civs might attack. If THEY take it, I can then take it from them and THEN raze it.
You can never raze capitals because of the liberate mechanic. You’ll need to culture bomb with a great artist to get your road back, if you don’t want to hold the city.
Just had the most irritating experience with that. “Ragusa wants a road”. Cool, I’m going to save 250 gold ! All right, the road’s at Ragusa’s frontier now, what’s the hold up ? Oh yeah, Ragusa only has one way in (one tile canyon surrounded by mountains on every side) and that way is packed with their unused workers who’ve finished building tile improvements but have nowhere else to go. Good show, you fookin’ idiots. Build your own goddamn road, why dontcha.
Does anyone know when they plan to release the modding and world builder tools?
But, conceivably, if say a neighboring civ like that Aztecs (who are the closest here) wages war and then annexes this city state that’s in a bad location, the city would then just be another Aztec city, correct? And then one can raze or do whatever one wishes?
The great artist culture bomb is a great idea! Mymain problem is that I built myother city in very nice land past two city states, therefore I’m only now discovering that roads don’t connect if their in another civ/city states territory.
Well, I finally played all the way through a game this weekend. I have been trying each civilization in turn, and this weekend I was on Egypt. Based on their mechanic (bonus to production for wonder construction) I decided to go for a cultural victory. I was on a 6-player map, and ended up on a continent with America and China as well as 5 city-states. My luxury resources were fairly limited, though I did control all of the ivory in the world apparently (I had 6 tiles of ivory!)
Playing culture is fairly slow. Okay, it is REALLY slow, especially when you don’t realize quite how high the penalty is for additional cities. I only had three, but I feel I would have done much better with two. This game, after learning from my previous attempts, I put serious thought into the buildings I constructed, and paid a lot more attention to the state of my budget, which helped me enormously.
I have seen a lot of complaints on CivFanatics about the lack of diplomacy, or the fact that it just doesn’t work… but I have to disagree. Heavy diplomacy kept me alive through this game, as I couldn’t afford the time or resources to produce and maintain much of a standing army, just a token defensive force. I was separated from China by two city-states that stretched from the coast to the American boundary, but those Americans expanded to the point that they butted up against me. I did everything I could to keep them happy, but our shared border was apparently a source of conflict. I also did everything I could to befriend China, who at the time had a military that could wipe Egypt off the planet (according to my military advisor). So, when America started making suggestions that things were about to fall apart, China intervened and asked me to declare war against America with them. I said yes, and put out my defenses… and America was wiped out within 5 turns. China then consolidated their power and wipe out all of the remaining city-states, and followed that up by signing a research agreement with me. They remained friendly with me to the end of the game.
And as for the end of that game? It went all the way to 2050, and ended with me losing… with 6 turns left to go on my Utopia Project. 
Nah, the game remembers capitals and city states no matter who controls them and who takes them from who. You can never, never ever never destroy them by any means, AFAIK.
Haven’t read the bulk of the thread, so forgive me if this stuff has been covered. Big fan of Civ IV, but I’ve not followed V too much out of concern it would be too much like Civ IV (the ‘they kept it the same now it sucks’ trope).
However, it’s got favourable reviews from the main gaming review sites so I thought I’d check out how much it was on Amazon, and possibly order it. To my surprise and shock, this major title in a beloved franchise has a review score of 2 1/2 stars!? Whisky Tango Foxtrot? Is this just Amazonian distaste of DRM/Steam, or are there severe flaws in the game?
This is why your culture victory didn’t work. The game tells you not to build too many cities if you want a cultural victory, but it’s wrong. You want tons of cities, especially if you’re getting per-city culture bonuses. The new-city penalty is additive and applied to the base one-city cost. So with five cities, it’s +150% of base not +271%. With global cultural bonuses, the culture from new cities will actually outpace the growth, so you get bonuses ever faster (after an initial slowdown).
I’d say it’s mostly a combination of people hating on it for being too different from Civ 4 and the anti-Steam group. Don’t get me wrong though, the game definitely has some major balance and mechanic issues.
The best way to get a good feel for the game is to watch some of the video play-throughs on the CivFanatics story forum (which is down so I can’t find the link) or the demo on Steam.
I did not know this! This thread has proven very useful, not only this, but I now know where the auto-saves are.
Is this game considerably easier than previous Civs? I just finished my first game ever on warlord difficulty in 1585 AD (227 turns). It was a small map with 6 players, and I won by steamrolling everyone with a domination victory.
And when it compares your score to the great leaders, I’m used to coming in somewhere around the middle - but the highest rated comparison they do is Caesar at IIRC 2200 points, and my score was 3193. So instead of my usual middle of the pack, I was 50% higher than the highest comparison score.
I’m not bragging since I didn’t play the game especially expertly, I’m just wondering if it’s normally this easy compared to previous civs. Time to do a higher difficulty I guess.
Try it on Prince difficulty next. I found Warlord very easy as well.
There is at least one way. If you have the “Single city challenge” mode on any city you defeat will be automatically and instantly razed.
Can I just say how jealous I am of all of you? Almost a week since release (I pre-ordered it) and I still can’t play because of the stupid intro video crash w/o error. Still no word from technical support either.
Perhaps they would respond better if I closed my email by saying, “my words are backed by nuclear weapons.” 
I wouldn’t say it’s easier, just more streamlined. After walking over the AI on warlord I have promptly been beaten into submission several times on prince, it’s a big step up in challenge.
I assume by now most people have noticed that their scouts retain the movement bonus when they’re upgraded to archers by huts. That’s true of all units that’re upgraded; they keep the bonuses from their previous forms. However, it is also true that they keep the disadvantages too. For example, artillery that is upgraded to rocket artillery still has a setup time, unlike fresh rocket artillery.
While the game is not perfect, it’s no more flawed than Civ IV was on release, and in my opinion the core game is better in a lot of ways.
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Hex maps are better.
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The city states are a FANTASTIC idea. Fantastic. (They really should be called "minor countries, not city-states, but whatever.) They add an absolute cornucopia of diplomatic, strategic, and military aspects to the game. That addition alone is worth the price of the game.
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The look and feel of the interface is really nice, in my opinion
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The combat system is better. I agree that the inability to stack noncombat units creates a few bugs, but the way it affects combat is just amazingly positive. I was a skeptic about the new combat system. I was wrong. It’s better.
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Limited resources is a neat idea too.
I expect they’ll improve the game with the next expansion and some patches, but to my mind it is clearly a better game than Civ IV.
Ohhhhhh so that’s why! I was so unhappy that the manual had lied to me about rocket artillery, but mine were all cannon>artillery>rocket artillery.