Finally picked it up yesterday. I haven’t played more than a hundred turns, but I am really looking forward to playing some more tonight (and my kids are green with jealousy, as they are playing Civ V and having to listen to me rave about some of these changes).
So far, I’m loving it. I adore the new city mechanics… I especially like that a city is bigger than one hex. To have a coastal city I am not limited strictly to placing my settlers only on the hexes adjacent to the ocean, but I have some more leeway… though to be honest, I haven’t even built a single ship yet.
I really like the new “trade creates roads” mechanic, it seems much more realistic. The city planning and districting gives a great deal of customizability. I also like that wonders are actually built, and take up real-world space. Reading through the list of Civs, I like the “flavor” of each of them. I am also very happy with the religions, and the custom religion symbols. Now I get to spread A’tuinism (with star-turtle symbology) around the world.
This weekend, after the “shiny new game” wears off and I grind through a nice epic game, I’ll be able to give a good objective assessment.
Out of curiosity, why do we get two versions of Greece?
ETA: I guess what we really have is Greece and Sparta, after a 5 second Google/Wikipedia trip. Sheesh.
Yeah, it’s a little unoriginal. Surely they could have dumped one for a more interesting civilization. I always liked Polynesia in Civ 5. And throw Canada a bone someday, we get Brazil instead?
Anyway… am I missing how you stop a war? Gorgo declared war on me and my legions have smashed her army, taken Corinth and now threaten another city, but I don’t even see a button to suggest ending the war. If she doesn’t want to stop fighting fine, but… she should want to stop fighting, and I am not sure where the option is hidden.
I’m not 100% sure about all of this, so corrections are welcomed.
Amenities are required on a per-city basis to keep cities happy. Luxuries create four amenities in the four most needy cities. (Arrogance provides an explanation in Post 60 that helped my understanding here.) If you are short amenities, production and growth drop in that city and nowhere else (though if you are short amenities in one city, you’re likely to have issues in others soon). I think it gets worse the longer/deeper the deficit, but I have avoided that. Amenities are provided by luxuries and buildings. Amenity demand is increased by population (I think) and war weariness.
Housing helps growth. If you have ample housing (i.e. a couple more housing than population) growth is uninhibited. As your population approaches the housing, growth slows but does not stop. I don’t think it impacts happiness. Housing is provided by access to water (rivers, aqueducts), a few buildings, terrain improvements (e.g. farms and others), and neighborhoods (unlocked mid to late game).
My only war I’ve been in so far, it was the other antagonist that aimed for peace. I assume it is similar to the method in Civ V, where you go into the trade screen, and one of the offers on both sides will be “Peace Treaty”. It allows you to sue for peace, and also to basically score a tribute from somebody in return for not destroying them any more.
In my one war yesterday, I was given a small amount of gold and a Piece of the True Cross to end the conflict.
Housing is required for your population in order to grow the city. Different improvements grant different amounts of housing- farms are 0.5 Housing each, other buildings vary. In addition, access to fresh water (rivers, lakes, oases, aqueducts) adds to your Housing value. Population growth slows as you approach your housing limit, and once your population has increased beyond the Housing limit by 5, growth stops altogether.
Amenities replaces happiness. You have to have 1 amenity for every 2 people in a city to keep the population content. If you have more than that ratio, city output and growth increase. Less, and the growth and output decrease. Too few, and rebellions can pop up.
Cities need housing to grow. Growth slows down quite a bit when a city is at or above its housing limit. A city gets housing from access to fresh water, from some tile improvements (most notably farms), and some buildings (a sewer gives +2, some district buildings like the university and the army base give +1). Around the modern era, you can build neighborhood districts that give up to +6 housing depending on how pretty the tile is.
Amenities are like happiness. A city doesn’t need one amenity per population point; I think it need one per 2 or 3 points above a certain threshold. You can get amenities from entertainment districts and buildings, wonders, civics, and luxuries. Note that each sources of a given luxury can only benefit four cities, and each type of luxury can only benefit a city once. Luxuries are automatically assigned where they’re needed the most.
Also note that higher-end entertainment buildings benefit not only the city that builds them, but also any other city of yours that has its center within six tiles of the district (9 if you’re the suzerain of Toronto). Place your entertainment districts carefully (as well as your industrial zones, which have a similar mechanic). Even if a city doesn’t appear to need more amenities, you may benefit from building, say, a stadium there. It may at least free up luxury goods which will then help other cities.
Having positive amenities in a city makes it more productive and makes it grow faster. Negative amenities hamper grows and productivity. Very negative amenities may cause a city to spawn barbarian units (“partisans”).
War weariness adds negative amenities to some of your cities. It accumulates when you fight battles, especially if you lose. It fades fairly quickly once you’re at peace.
Oh, and two other notes about housing and amenities:
If you get an apostle with the promotion that allows him to convert barbarians, you can be tricky and garrison him in one of your cities that’s in dangers of spawning partisans. I’ve read of other players getting several infantry units this way when they were cutting edge.
Kongo has a unique variant of the neighborhood called the Mbanza that is unlocked much earlier than usual. It has to be built on a woods or rain forest tile, but it always provides +5 housing, +2 food, and +4 gold. Sounds like a big deal if you want to play a “tall” game.
If you CAN end the war (the other side will listen), the option is offered at the top of the diplo screen. Last night, Russia refused to let me offer peace (I was even willing to give St. Petersburg back!); as a result, Russia is no more.
Also, don’t be shocked if the option to offer peace is given, but you cannot find any way of satisfying the opponent. After polishing off Russia, the Scythian ruler refused money, luxuries and iron to end a war she started over my warmongering ways. I guess she thought her hordes of angry warriors, archers and spearmen headed towards Rome were impressive. The 1st, 5th and 7th Legions weren’t impressed. Shortly after, she offered peace for nothing. :dubious:
So, what’s the relationship between housing and food? Is there a direct relationship between how many “foods” a square is bringing in and how much “housing” it provides?
Annoying UI complaint: there doesn’t seem to be a list you can call up of your units and their stats. You can get a clickable list of units for purposes of activating them by clicking on the name of the unit (“Archer” or “1st Legion Romana”), but haven’t found a list comparable to the list of cities and their status. EVERY Civ iteration has had a list of units available. Grrrr.
Direct relationship, no. They both impact the growth of the city, so that’s where they interact, but not directly. Low or insufficient housing is a penalty to the growth rate. The growth rate is driven by food. The relationship is indirect. So if you food would cause you to grow in 12 turns but you have a 25% growth rate penalty due to a housing shortage, you’ll grow in 9 turns. Food does it’s thing (determine how long until growth) while housing does another (penalize that rate).
I’m trying to remember if I’ve had this much trouble getting started every time there is a new version.
The one little thing I like a lot is when you can move a unit, the blue outline shows you which hexes it can reach in a single turn. That’s a nice addition.
What’s up with the spies that show up in trade deals? I don’t think they’re my spies. Are the various countries trying to get their own spies back? Have I captured them (I didn’t do anything on purpose.) Has anyone figured this one out?
Yeah, they are captured spies. If they show under your tab, you’ve captured them and if under their tab they have. Then you can meet at the Checkpoint Charlie and swap prisoners.
Just finished my first full game on king. It was a ton of fun. As usual, I find it easiest to win through the space race.
The AI has some serious flaws–worse than Civ V somehow. It can pump out units at a crazy pace, but it cannot use them effectively. Settlers wanders in the desert for years, and there’s no real military tactics to speak of.
I had thought I read that they really improved the AI’s combat skills. What happened to that?
Yeah, I haven’t been impressed with the AI at all.
The diplomacy is out of whack. It’s very bipolar. I, honestly, don’t even try to be diplomatic anymore. I can have the best relationship the entire game but if I (accidentally) get influence on a city-state then Germany is denouncing me. I know it’s his agenda but there needs to be some sort of nuance.
Also, I’ve been wrecking everyone on Emperor. As long as you can get past the initial rush you’re fine: they don’t update units. So my infantrymen were slaughtering spear men.
I got it over the weekend and played for several hours – I’ve learned that Scythia is nearly unstoppable, if played well (the unique factors include a 2-for-1 on light cavalry and horse archers, and units automatically heal 30 points or so if they kill an enemy unit), at least in the early game so far (I play Marathon speed), for conqueror-types. Great fun so far!
I’ve gotten denounced countless times as a warmonger so far, but it hasn’t seem to matter. Two civs tried to team up on me at one point, but they were both smaller combined than I am, and one sued for peace and I turned down the other since I was about to take his capitol.
