played a couple hours with the expansion today. it's definitely better, but I haven't been far enough into some of the mechanics to be too specific yet. took me a while before I established an embassy somewhere, and I haven't founded a religion yet. I'll keep updating as I figure it out.
Game seems to run smoother in general. I have everything on max settings and the game is chugging along nicely.
Combat AI does not seem improved. I held off an attack of 7 units and a Great General with an archer, warrior, and spearman + 1 city, and the city was never in any danger of being taken over.
I still need to assemble my new 24" 1080p LED for this baby. I've been sick with the flu for a week though and I'm only just recovering. It's pretty sad when putting together a stand seems like such a task.
-- K | H | A | Q | Q | A | H | K "we're about 50 years behind the rest of western society." -icon on B8
It still feels a ton like Civ 5, so if you're someone who doesn't like 5 because of whatever reason, you can probably pass on it, but I'd say after playing about 200 turns of it that it's worth it.
I'm enjoying all the new stuff a ton. I chose Byzantines for my first foray into the expack and decided to play religiously. I got lucky in that the only other "religious" civ on the map was Ghandi, isolated by himself on his own big island, which allowed me to spread Christianity basically worldwide. Pursuing a diplo victory now.
Best part of this game was I started next to a very large inland sea, and on the other side of the sea? Rome. We proceeded to be BFFs
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The box says "Online Gameplay not rated by ESRB", I should be able to trade my phallic named Wobbufetts to a bunch of 8 year olds. - MarvelousGerbil
playing as Austria, with a religious bonus of faster population growth. I look forward to buying every city state on the map. which seems like a much easier way to win a military victory. buy a city state on another continent, then use that as your springboard for invasion. better than sending all your troops across the ocean.
I ended up having to go for a military victory because the three countries on my continent would just not stop declaring war on me. never ending cycle of two on ones and eventually I just had to make it a point to wipe them all out which made the rest of the world think less of me.
the religion stuff is really fun, I'm curious how it'll be with real people. AI didn't seem to quite know what to do with it and I had built the continent's dominant religion pretty quickly.
still a lame ending something better than that please!
Tried out the Byzantines because they had a basic UA related to religion and dropped myself down to Prince to test out the new stuff in the expansion..
1) Dromons are very, very powerful compared to Triremes. Which was a good thing, because:
2) AIs seems to have gotten much better at combat, specifically naval combat. China was the nation right below mine, and while I was building culture buildings she took the opportunity to make a big fleet and launch an invasion. Luckily for me the turn before I had decided to get a few more Dromons to protect my borders, or I'd have lost my capital. Was a 5 land/8 ship fleet on Prince. I ended up crushing her pretty easily in the end, but it is only Prince after all.
3) Diplomacy seems a lot more stable now. After finishing off China 2 of the people I was not friends with called me a warmonger, but my friends didn't bat an eye. I have held steady friendships for over 250 turns now (on Epic) without a single breakdown. It's a nice change.
4) Religion seems very powerful to me. I made it a goal to get first pick of abilities and took the +1 production to fishing boats, which gave all my cities at least a +3. Used my UA to pick up the culture from Pastures (aiming for a Cultural victory, as those are my favourite) which amounted to +12ish, and all this came in before I had hit 100 turns. I do wish I had picked the option to buy units with Faith though, as after I built my Padogas it's been pretty worthless unless a city state quest comes up.
5) Espionage is a bit limited, but I like it as a hedge against runaway civs. I'm using my spies on Napoleon right now, as he's going up the military half of the tech tree and I'm going on the culture path. So I get free military tech upgrades without having to divert my beakers. I do wish there was a steal culture/sabotage building sort of option to give me something to do against people that aren't out-teching me, but that might be intentional that I cannot.
6) City states feel a lot more involved now. I actually aim for quests to keep my influence up, rather than throwing money at it. Faith ones might be a bit overpowered at the start of the game though. I like that the Military ones can give out specific UUs as well, makes your choice of city state relevant.
7) Love the new tech tree, and the archer line upgrades. Not so sure about the change to how hard cities are to capture, but I guess now that siege units don't have a resource cost it's okay.
oh my god why does the UN have to be on such a far away tech
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The box says "Online Gameplay not rated by ESRB", I should be able to trade my phallic named Wobbufetts to a bunch of 8 year olds. - MarvelousGerbil
Except for my increasingly deranged ranting in that other thread I am enjoying the game a lot. Religion is very interesting and very powerful. I don't think I've had this much happiness in all my previous games put together. When the people who like to smile the most report comes up I'm actually high on the list instead of barely treading water.
Not quite sure how religious "pressure" is determined yet. My religion seems to be running roughshod over most of the others but Christianity just swamps mine out where ever present.
I do like the changes to combat. Cities are harder to capture and units are harder to kill. Makes siege equipment and positioning more important.
Civ fan. No expansion. I haven't even really been looking at it actively. Anyone care to say anything to try to convert me?
IMO, espionage was one of the dumbest aspects of CIV w/xpac. Just annoying, useless for me, and made my governors produce great spies I never wanted. I see espionage is back?
And obviously so is religion, which I know little about except what I've inferred from this topic and the other one.
Either way, I'll probably get the expansion, and either way I'll probably wait until it goes on sale, but figured I'd ask.
it'll be a name you don't recognize, but I use my real life e-mail as my Steam name so I guess you can join Icon as one of the two B8ers who could stalk me if you wanted to
yeah espionage and corps sucked in Civ 4. I don't have a good read on espionage in 5 yet but people did keep stealing technology from me for a while so I guess it can be pretty useful.
Espionage in Civ V is pretty neat. I like it more for City State manipulation than for stealing tech. Every handful of turns your spies have a chance to give you an opinion boost (rigging the election) or you can try to immediately supplant their currently ally (stage a coup).
Religion is better too because it does more than define who hates who the most like in Civ 4. You can hand pick what bonuses you want it to give as it progresses from a pantheon belief to a full fledged religion.
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The box says "Online Gameplay not rated by ESRB", I should be able to trade my phallic named Wobbufetts to a bunch of 8 year olds. - MarvelousGerbil
kill all the civs on my continent, everyone else thinks I'm a warmonger, I buy all the city states as allies on the last turn and win a diplomatic victory. feels great man.
Playing my first game as Boudicca. Gaining faith through combat is pretty neat, I like the religion system so far but haven't dug too deep into it. Not having read about the new civs, seeing Dido in my game was surprising, considering I had just read the aeneid.
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You beat yourself up with your past. Don't blame yourself, blame the world. Blame God. Blame me.
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The box says "Online Gameplay not rated by ESRB", I should be able to trade my phallic named Wobbufetts to a bunch of 8 year olds. - MarvelousGerbil
I play on Emperor for casual game, Immortal for challenging games, and Deity on occasion when I want to play certain ways (I'm not co-ordinated enough to win a military victory on Deity with more than 3 opponents, so I mostly play OCC Cultural in Deity). Not sure why King would be the best difficulty though, Prince is the one where everything is even.
Played a game as the Mayans, I think they might be the strongest player controlled civ in the expansion. All 3 of their Unique items are amazing.
Not sure why King would be the best difficulty though, Prince is the one where everything is even.
Well no, it's actually not, because the player is human <.<
The AI needs the handicap to be a challenge to someone that knows what they're doing.
That might not be the case anymore though because they seems to have seriously buffed the AI's intelligence... having some big trouble against them on King in my 2 games I've played since the expansion.
I play on Emperor for casual game, Immortal for challenging games, and Deity on occasion when I want to play certain ways (I'm not co-ordinated enough to win a military victory on Deity with more than 3 opponents, so I mostly play OCC Cultural in Deity). Not sure why King would be the best difficulty though, Prince is the one where everything is even.
Played a game as the Mayans, I think they might be the strongest player controlled civ in the expansion. All 3 of their Unique items are amazing.
This.
The AI still cannot handle combat worth a damn. I regularly face armies in the ancient era 2-3 times my size and take minimal/no losses. The only hard battle I've had so far is one where the position was pretty much insurmountable given someone competent on the other end.
Yeah, King strikes a good enough balance between enjoyable but still challenging. I've played on harder than that and still had a good time, but that's closer to the ideal for most than Prince, I'd say. Once you understand the game, anyway.
As Phase said, the AI isn't all that great at combat, and you can exploit this pretty easily. Granted, it does take some experience, but once you get used to proper scouting (know when and where the attacks are coming), proper defense (know which cities are defensible, when to pull back and when to stand your ground, drawing proper battle lines), and most of all patience (this is where I fail on Deity, I always go to early and it's just not feasible against more than one Deity opponent.) If you can get a +1 range promotion on any ranged unit you have basically won the game, the AI is really bad at dealing with them.
Now, there's a lot more to a successful Deity game than combat (timing wonders and GP, holding GP, the science race, etc), but you shouldn't let the bonuses scare you, it's not all that bad once you learn their tricks.
Granted that's assuming you like to play that way. To be honest I find it kind of dull sometimes myself.
normal is easy but I'm not a huge fan of AI improvement through handicaps
it's like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. yeah AI is easy on normal but putting them on harder difficulty doesn't make it more fun. they just mine resources faster than you. not the same game anymore.
you could probably make a game where the game is completely won and you're just toying around with other countries/allowing them to exist, but the interaction that makes Civ interesting is most of the time not gonna last past a certain point. usually you just hit a mark somewhere in the game where you've got more territory, points, and production capacity than everyone else and at that point the game is basically won and you can do it however you want.
Finished my first game of God and Kings as Dido on large/emperor/continent(random)/epic with a diplomatic victory. I was poised to win a domination victory (three easily accessible capitals remaining) or a cultural victory (was in the process of building the Utopia Project when the vote came up) but god damn Siam built the UN. Turns out I never won a diplo victory in Civ V before so I got the achievement for that which is nice I guess. It was kind of sloppy game in the planning department. Didn't have a clear goal from the onset and was more interested in playing with the new toys than charging forward to victory. I started attacking civs with the next highest score just to take them down a notch and before I realized it I owned almost ever wonder and had gold/faith/culture coming out of my ears so I just took it easy until the end.
I like all of the new stuff.
One odd thing I noticed was that the AI don't seem to be expand as quickly as I'm used to. Usually they take advantage of their infinite bonus happiness and paint the map as fast as possible, but they moved at a slower, more measured pace in this game. Not sure if it's a new thing or if circumstances just forced them to slow down in this particular game.
So, can anyone tell me exactly what bonuses the AI gets on higher levels? Started a new game on King and the main difference I see is that everyone has a LOT more military units than they usually do. I just checked my advisor, and everyone has a more powerful military than me, with Greece and Japan both having one that could wipe me off the planet. Greece has city-spam everywhere and fast, so I assume they're getting bonuses to happiness and production. They've got six cities out before I got my third.
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/
Right. My last game before this had Greece city-spam, just not nearly so quickly.
That's the one thing I still hate about this game are the AIs who city-spam. Greece and Persia are the worst, but almost everyone does it if you give them a chance.
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/