The naval melee units attack hexes directly, just like the land melee units. They can’t attack anything on land except for city hexes. Your city was taken by a destroyer.
Thanks. So a destroyer (and earlier units) can do it but nor my battleships.
And I just got my first great admiral. Except he was created in a port on an inland sea that is totally surrounded by me. I think in that scenario there is little to do but delete him.
And a turn later I won a science victory anyway.
I liked the game. I think more needs to be done with espionage, but the basics were there. I’m glad I dropped back to Prince- I had forgotten there is a pretty big gap between Prince and King.
Thanks to Terminus Est for his help. I need to learn a lot more about religion I think.
I like the G&K espionage system much better than BtS - no more messing about with yet another slider, no more keeping track of where your spies had run off to. Manipulating city state politics adds yet another layer to diplomacy, as well as sowing intrigue amongst the rival civs. The espionage AI could use some work, however. They kept hitting my capital city when, if I understand the rating system correctly, my science city was far better pickings.
In the interminable bit of the end-game of my first game at the moment (uncatchable military and scientific lead, waiting for the point that I can knock over a victory condition) as Byzantium (an odd selection for an empire, considering that both Rome and the Ottomans are also playable).
I’m working through some of the kinks, though. My preferred strategy (an early scientific lead, backed by really hammering home relationships with the city states) has been pretty badly nerfed by the espionage changes and the fact that the city states get much needier early on - American bullying of Jerusalem and Sidon meant that I had to take them out pretty quickly, which led to poor relations with England, so they had to go, which means that despite the fact that only a couple of holy cities aren’t entirely in the thrall of my state religion, everyone thinks I’m a bloodthirsty monster and are busy forming new alliances to denounce me.
Sigh.
The espionage is all on me because of my science lead - just before it crashed for the last time last night Egypt stole chivalry from me so I rolled my tanks over them in four turns. I’ve got three or four civs trying to disrupt my alliance with Prague, and the rest seem to be stationed permanently in my capital. Siam’s had three spies executed already.
A few things I’ve noticed:
- It’s much less stable and prone to freeze-crashing, which it never did before. I’ve updated drivers, but it hasn’t helped.
- Finding out that great artists don’t culture-bomb any more can be problematic when you’ve just left them one square away from a barbarian, miles from protection and you’d let the Polynesians expand onto a key oil hex because you thought you could get it back from them later.
- Coastal cities have gone from being a minor economic benefit to potentially a substantial military liability such that you only want to have one per continent.
- I like the better explanations of what it means to be friends or denounce someone.
- It’s a lot easier to hook up with a handful of city-states, but much harder to build a major UN-busting network with them. They’re more needy of attention than they used to be, but also more transparent.
- Each way to win except social utopia has had another layer of complexity added to it - espionage and extra techs nerf science, tougher upgrade paths for the military (and less-straightforward wars), harder diplomacy. What it means is that you have to pick your path earlier and focus harder.
- It’s annoying that, if you have a major science advantage by renaissance time, your espionage game is almost entirely defensive.
- Work out a reason for your faith to benefit you. Acting blind I created a faith that would spread everywhere, but can’t be used for anything meaningful except building great engineers late in the game. If I’d had a faith that could be used to build cathedrals or mosques (or great scientists) it would have been much more useful. AFAIK, the only benefit it’s bringing me is relationship boosts with other civs that aren’t offsetting how much they all hate me anyway.
For today only, the Gods & Kings expansion is 35% off ($19.49) at Green Man Gaming.
A standalone demo for Gods & Kings is out. You can download it from the Steam store page. More info about the demo at CivFanatics.
BigNik, thanks for the update. As a general enquiry, how do you manage to get a substantial scientific lead? I find, playing on King level, that I am always now lagging behind the AI and twice now I’ve had my arse handed to me on a platter by the opposition. Mainly due to a huge military and more advanced than mine.
Obviously I need to revisit the basics of the way I play.
I usually play on Prince, because the incessant combat above that level bores me to tears, but the science strategy I use is to plough through early-game cash to generate settlers quickly (I don’t seem to be getting nearly as many happiness problems since G&K’s installation), and set up 5-6 cities when competitors have 2-3. The trade benefits are then funnelled into scie… Sorry. funnelled into SCIENCE!, which lets me chase the new composite bowmen unit ASAP.
I seem to be able to hit the composite bowmen tech in just enough time to produce a couple before coming under attack for the first time. That buys me enough time to get swordsmen out, assuming I’m within distance of iron. If not, the game gets a lot harder at that point and things go on pause while a new city or two is founded. Trade is your friend.
Once the SCIENCE! is humming along nicely and invasions are turning into stalemates, the easiest win about 80% of the time is to start generating culture like a pot of yoghurt left on a sunny countertop and go for a Utopian win. The rest of the time it’s usually a UN-based victory. It’s actually really rare to get an Alpha Centauri win, and while a conquest win is usually possible - tanks or modern armour vs knights is usually the breakdown - see above about being bored to tears.