Since the city-state tech level is linked to the player’s tech level*, it’s surprisingly easy for city-states to crush AI empires. If you out tech the AI (and you always do, short of Deity), then city-states are pumping out mechanized infantry and rolling over the AIs’ pikemen. They don’t seem to venture too far away from home though. In one of my games, the city-state razed the two cities that it conquered. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I haven’t seen it happen since.
I like that the city-states can actually be aggressive. I remember in one game I had a city-state to my south with a single Japanese city, which was a thorn in my side. I gifted them a couple of my best units and a few turns later the city-state was able to take and hold the Japanese city.
That worked out for me because
1: It gave me a stronger ally throughout the game
2: It hurt the Japanese. I have yet to have a game with the Iroquois or the Japanese where they weren’t huge dicks.
On a related note, the fact Uranium is a very limited resource is a nice touch, too- I ended up getting involved in a least one war to gain access to it (well, the other Civ certainly didn’t need it, what with only just having acquired arquebusiers) and it became an interesting strategic decision to decide where to deploy my two precious A-bombs after that, and would I use my one remaining Uranium resource to build a third A-bomb, or construct a nuclear power plant?
Well, that’s a new one - playing as Gandhi, both Persia and Arabia were rather put out that I conquered Gandhi. I’m not sure if that was just a typo (I’d relatively recently conquered Rome) or just AI bugginess, though.
Yeah, these days I more or less go (or rather, I would if my PC wasn’t a stack of scraps right now…) straight for Iron Working. Don’t care that it takes 1200 turns off the bat, it’s just too important to have masses of it, much more so than it was in 4. Horses I can give or take, luxuries will come in due time, marble can wait for the really nice wonders and oil, well, if you haven’t got a dominant position by the time it becomes important you probably never will.
But Iron will make or break your middle age/Renaissance, and if your capital doesn’t have a bunch of it you want to settle on some ASAP. Respect da Legion, yo.
I honestly don’t care about iron as long as there are horses. I usually ignore the iron branch and go for horseman asap and knights soon after. The extra movement of horse units make conquering swift and easy and their damage matches the slower melee. Maybe in multiplayer you could be countered by pikemen but the AI just isn’t good enough to use the appropriate counters effectively.
Horses are better on the offense and iron siege weapons are better on defense. It doesn’t really matter how your start is though, since a city-state will just send you whatever you need.
I won really, really easily. The AI seems great at building Wonders - I’m skeptical of the value of a lot of them, though, as opposed to dedicating the production to ordinary buildings - but otherwise I was untouchable. The English put up an okay fight but by game’s end they were building destroyers and I had nuclear weapons.
The interactions with city states are just a bit too simple. Give 'em some money, get the benefit.
Towards the end the game was reeeeeeally dragging. It was just a plod towards an inevitable victory, tapping “Next Turn” over and over. It’s always been an issue with Civ; once you get a big lead in tech and size the game’s over and no AI can stop you, so in effect I played the game out just to see a Giant Death Robot.
Two thoughts about civ choice:
4a: The type of map dictates what civ you should use - there’s no point being India on a huge map, and there’s no point being anyone else on a small one, and
4b: The different civ traits are not even remotely close to each other in ability. The Ottoman thing where you might get to capture barbarian ships is retarded, whereas some of the other traits are ferociously powerful.
A lot of mods are already out there and I guess I’ll have to come up with a mod for a Canadian civilization because there’s one out there already and it’s stupid.
England declared war on me and I took one of their cities far off on the end of the continent, but I wasn’t really able to support it in any way.
The english landed 10 longbowmen around the town. They didn’t have a single melee unit, so they couldn’t retake the city, they would just bombard and pillage the hell out of it over and over. The siege lasted like 20 turns before they finally landed a melee unit.
India is the best on a huge map; they have the least happiness problems for a huge empire. Doubling the unhappiness from the number of cities doesn’t even come close to offsetting the advantage of halved unhappiness from population. Population unhappiness is a far greater problem, especially if you’re taking advantage of marine city-states. I had a continent-spanning Arabian empire that had about 40 unhappiness from the number of cities and maybe 120 from population.
For sure some civilizations are just straight up better than others. The Greeks for example. Not only is their city-state enhancing ability amazing, but their two unique units are both on top of the strength/production chart and they get them in the first era. I can tell you right now that the Greeks will be the Akuma of Civ 5 multiplayer unless something changes.
Persia is amazing. China is amazing just for the broken-good Paper Maker. Siam has a great ability, unit and building.
Then you have the superbad civs, like America, the Germans, or England. The Ottomans would be right with them if Janissaries weren’t amazing and retained their bonus as they upgrade. The rest of the civs is generally something great combined with something terrible to leave them average.
Top 5: Greeks (by a mile), Siam, China, Persia, and India.
Bottom 5: America, Germany, England, Russia, and Iroquois (or Japan, I dunno).
I love playing as India. I don’t really bother with their uniques, but that trait is amazing. Without it there’s no way I could have large empires.
England has a good UU: The Longbowman, but everything else about them sucks.
I’d say Japan, if anything, would be pretty middle of the road, but not in the bottom. Same goes for Iroquois. America, though, sucks. The B17 isn’t a very good unit. By that stage in the game it really doesn’t do much. You’ve already won it or lost.
I agree btw that Greek is the best. Get some culture going and go down the patronage tree, keep everyone in the game your ally, and you’re a powerhouse.
In fact, for my next game, I think I may try a huge map with 24 city states as Alexander, and then do my best to pump out enough money to stay allied with a ton of them to see what sort of massive bonuses and units I can get. Seems like you could speed-grow your cities even without building many farms by getting 8 or 10 maritine states as allies.
I guess you can stack golden ages. If you’re Darius and you build the wonder-lengthening improvement? (Chichen Itza?) and you start stacking up the various sources of golden ages, you can get some pretty massive 60+ turn golden ages going.
Does happiness accrue towards the next golden age while you’re currently in one? I don’t think it does but I haven’t tested it. I think it should, otherwise you just have happiness idling for all that time.
I love playing the african dude, do you realize how powerful it can be to be getting triple gold from capping barbarians in combo with honor? I don’t build stuff in the early half of the game, I buy the shit from the gold I get from the barbarians. I am 190 turns into a new game and already have over 20K in gold, and that is after buying 12 archers.
There is a policy (I forget which one…think it is under Order which you get in the industrialized era) that cuts unhappiness from cities in half. The build the Forbidden Palace wonder which cuts your unhappiness from cities in half.
I haven’t had any performance problems with the game (except load times can get pretty damn slow) but it does make me wonder wtf the game is doing to have such a resource footprint. It’s a very pretty game, but… it’s still a turn based board game. There isn’t a lot of dynamic lighting or particle effects or something to worry about. Yet it does seem to be pretty resource intensive.
So anyway, I’m trying out a quick game, and I’m running Darius, and I’ve managed to stack golden ages for about 70 turns now - which is like the 1700s through the early 1900s on this time scale. I wonder if my economy would come to a grinding halt if this golden age ever ended…
Is there any way to get railroad bonuses to cross the ocean somehow? Or is it strictly land ties to your capital?
Oh, and do buildings get destroyed when you take over a city? If you put them as puppets, you don’t get the occupation unhappiness - but you do get unhappiness for the new population. Every time I pick up a new city, even as a puppet, my happiness drops from 2-7. Which means either the AI isn’t building happiness buildings in the city I just captured, it got destroyed during conquering, or happiness bonuses don’t count for puppet cities. Which is it?
"If a city is captured, its World Wonders are captured as well. A city’s National Wonders are destroyed when the city is captured.
The city’s culture and military buildings (temples, barracks, etc.) are always destroyed when the city is taken. All other buildings have a 66% chance of being captured intact."
