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Posted by: Backgammon Sep 25 2010, 09:50 PM

So, I'v had a few hours to play Civ 5. Wow, very different from Civ 4 and previous. Very.

You have waaaay less units now. This makes sense since multiple units can't be on the same tile. A handful of units is all you need. But you have to use them wisely. Now that long range units really are long range, shotting a few tiles away, warefare becomes much more tactical. Positioning your units and ensuring they support each other is crucial. Positioning is everything. This makes combat feel more involved than building up many units and crushing your enemy with superior firepower. It's a good change. Oh, you also now have far fewer units. Like, your swordsmen are good for a looong time. So you're really not cranking them out constantly, a few here and there is sufficient. Which is good, because compre to Civ 4, cities build buildings and units at a snail's pace.

Next up, gone is the blanketing of the entire map with cities and cultural borders. The map is a hodge-podge of cities here and there. Small empires of a few cities are somewhat viable, due to mechanisms that exponentially punish large empires. I say punish, but not really. Everything slows down the more cities you have, but then you have more cities that produce stuff, so in a way it balances out. Big is still better in the end, of course, but when you'Re small, all is not lost.

City-states (AI controlled strong 1-city empires) are interesting. If you get in nice with them, they give you resources as well as bonuses. So for example, I have one providing me with extra culture and more importantly the Iron I need to fuel my wars. It's a pain in the ass to have to maintain the relationship, but it's an interesting strategic element. I *could* conquer them, but then I'd lose the cultural bonus they give me, though I'd have control of the Iron.

And resources... well, you need 1 Iron per unit (swordsman, cavalry, etc) you want to build. So it's a huge, huge strategic element to get your hands on as much as you can while depriving the enemy. It's cool.

Overall, shockingly different, but I have to say I like it. Cause honestly, if they had made Civ 4.5, there'd be no point, right? A new game is a good thing.

(edited the "can't" - thanks Yerameyahu)

Posted by: Yerameyahu Sep 25 2010, 09:55 PM

You typo'd; multiple unit's *can't* be on the same tile. What a huge change that is, though.

You hit all the big changes. I can't wait to get my hands on it: the tactical combat, the complex diplomacy… it looks very interesting.

Posted by: nezumi Sep 25 2010, 11:12 PM

So the big question - in six years when I get a hankering for Civilization - which version will I be cracking open?

Posted by: pbangarth Sep 26 2010, 04:27 AM

I have Civ 4 but haven't played it yet. I was waiting till I finished writing my dissertation. Then it bogged down. I didn't waste the time playing Civ. Instead I played Shadowrun.

Posted by: Karoline Sep 26 2010, 04:30 AM

III Or was it II? Which was the last one that had the more 'old school' grapics? Think it was II now that I think about it. That one has always been my favorite. I loved trying to get a good throne room, even though I had no idea what I needed to do to get throne room upgrades

I remember in one game I was in the late 1900s (or so) before I got my first throne room upgrade, in which I upgraded my rock to a wooden chair.

Edit:
I haven't tried V yet, and I don't think I will for a while. As much as I love Civ, I have enough other games to occupy my time for the moment, and enough games out there that I'm really looking forward to that I feel the need to save my money, especially as work has been slow lately.

Posted by: hobgoblin Sep 26 2010, 08:35 AM

I think the best part of that game (II btw) was the game devs dressing up to play advisors (the happy drunk knight when doing well militarily is perhaps the best one).

Posted by: nezumi Sep 26 2010, 11:39 AM

These words contain great wisdom many students have yet to learn...

Civ3 absolutely sucked, so I don't think you're referring to that. Civ2 rocked my socks, but I still find myself playing Civ4 for the cultural borders and special resources, which adds at least a degree more tactics to the game. I do also like playing a game which feels like it could actually be real history (so I love the Rhye's and Fall mod - when I can get it to work).

Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 26 2010, 12:09 PM

Definitely II. It was the last Civilization.

IV was entertaining, but it teaches that there are paths to victory that do not involve grinding the world beneath the boot of your military or technological superiority. This is a misguided lesson.

~J

Posted by: Yerameyahu Sep 26 2010, 09:39 PM

I refuse to play Fugly Civ. Civ3 was fine, and 4 was only moderately different from 3.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 27 2010, 05:48 AM

Wait, you refuse to play Fugly Civ but you've played 3 and 4? How does that work?

(So I played Civ III once after it came out. Turns out "being able to tell the units apart" was less important than "being in 3D". I've made my peace with Civ IV since, but the problem remains.)

~J

Posted by: nezumi Sep 27 2010, 01:11 PM

Civ III was the most frustrating civ game because of how territory worked. Civ IV fixed that with cultural borders (and I really enjoyed that aspect). Civ II fixed it with just letting you spam cities like crazy. I'd play Civ I over Civ III.

While I can understand Kage's feelings, keep in mind you can remove those false forms of victories. I think those were just put in because Civ is trying to appeal to a wider demographic (one might say 'feminine', but the female gamers I know are more likely to go for 'crushing defeat of your enemies' than many of the males). The science ending is nice in that it's a lot more convenient way to show off your technological and industrial superiority than tracking down every last city on the map.

Posted by: Backgammon Sep 27 2010, 02:41 PM

So after a marathon Civ 5 weekend (civ players know what I mean here), I managed to finish, and win, a whole game.

As you get later into the game, the feel stays pretty much the same. I had a lot of happiness/money problems that kept challenging me as my empire swelled. I got so big I managed to steamroll everyone else with my crushing and technologically superior military might. One interesting thing is that Nukes no longer cause any diplomatic problems... While I was the only one that had any (and when I nuked the last remaining enemy capital, it was appropriately satisfying, especially since I send my Mechs to finish it off through the cloud of Fallout). I imagine in a game where remaining civs are equal, you're going to have a very explosive finale.

All in all, I had a lot of fun. Like I said, the new tactical combat is really a new fun element. Really makes warfare more interesting.

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 27 2010, 02:53 PM

I love some of the trades I've done with the AI.

"Would would you give me for the sugar luxury resource for 45 turns?"
I will give you 275 gold, 9 gold per turn, 5 iron resources for 45 turns, and give you open borders.
Sugar funded my samurai army.

I was also blown away at the offer that the Arabs gave me for peace.
We'll give you our treasury and all our cities but our capitol if you would please just accept this peace treaty.

I think this really points out my impression between Civ 5 and previous civs. I never got anything good on equivalent difficulties. In fact this is the first time I received a city from the AI via "diplomacy".

Posted by: pbangarth Sep 27 2010, 03:47 PM

Sounds cool!
I got a city or two a few times when negotiating from a position of strength in Civ III.

Posted by: Karoline Sep 27 2010, 03:59 PM

I've noticed that most games that have diplomacy seem to use it more so that computers can threaten you with war early on as opposed to any sort of real diplomacy. Of course that also means I can spend a small amount on bribes to keep people from attacking me as opposed to building up a huge army.

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 27 2010, 04:33 PM

I've never been able to get a city when I was at war and the side I was crushing was looking for peace. In fact I could barely get anything from them in return for peace. I would definitely say the AI, with regard to negotiations, is a lot more even. I remember technology trades in older versions. I would throw out a decently advanced tech. In return they would offer just a crappy tech that I passed over with nothing else.

Posted by: Backgammon Sep 27 2010, 04:56 PM

You know what, I suspect the payments the AI offers you for peace is based on their personality. Like, when I was winning against super-aggressive Germany, when they were suing for Peace, they wouldn't offer me jack shit, even though I was clearly in a position to eradicate them. Same with the Siam empire I crushed. However, when I had an early war with Native Americans, and I had the upper hand but wasn't in a position to crush them, they offered me boat loads of stuff for peace.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Sep 27 2010, 06:14 PM

Playing HOI3 for now. But will probably pick Civ5 up later. In CIV IV, once I had a modern army (WWII-level by the 1700's)- I would be able to take out another civ in 2-3 turns. Talk about shock and awe....

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 27 2010, 06:14 PM

That may very well be true but I never got anything from AIs in previous Civ versions. The fact that I'm getting something good out of diplomacy makes it more than a "avoid being attacked by the ai" tool.

Posted by: pbangarth Sep 27 2010, 08:32 PM

That certainly sounds interesting.

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 27 2010, 08:35 PM

It appears I'm not the only one that has such great success with diplomacy. Apparently there have been some people that have had an enemy civ declare war on them and attack them. They hold them off and never counter-attack but the AI suddenly pops up a peace treaty offer and gives them a lot of cities.

Posted by: Dumori Sep 27 2010, 08:57 PM

Call to power?

Posted by: Dumori Sep 27 2010, 09:03 PM

I've reached higher tech levels quicker before but Only as the board was in may favour I was an island empire so I just built a few good naval units and research while I focused on tech only I recall maybe ww2 tech when some people still had wooden forts. Little to say I dominated I actually just fortified my island and fleet and let the others battle it out while I gave random tech to people playing empires against each other from a position of supreme technological supremacy was fun.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 28 2010, 01:10 AM

Very nice. That always annoyed me—it's been a source of contention, certainly, but in the real world we saw nukes used twice without those kinds of serious diplomatic repercussions.

~J

Posted by: Karoline Sep 28 2010, 02:56 AM

Actually, Alpha Centauri is another great one, though it is basically just CIV II reskinned and reworked a bit, but I liked the changes.

Of course, back then, no one really knew what the heck was going on. I'd imagine many nations at the time didn't really know what had happened. US bombed some stuff, and Japan surrendered. I don't think they knew that it was just two huge bombs, and they wouldn't even have known what a nuke was at the time.

But, if anyone dropped a nuke on anyone now... well, you can bet there would be absurd political (and/or military (Nukes)) backlash.

I think a mechanic where the first nuke and all nukes fired that turn produce no backlash (And perhaps positive reactions, i.e. 'oh gods, don't do that again!'), but then as time goes on, their use draws more and more backlash would be cool. Maybe the first time immunity wouldn't happen if at least Y people had nuke tech. Anyway, it could be far more interesting than 'everyone hates you forever and always' or 'no one cares'.

Posted by: Tanegar Sep 28 2010, 03:35 AM

Alpha Centauri is awesome. I'd love to see a sequel.

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 28 2010, 12:58 PM

I'm bordered between liking and hating puppet states. The game definitely scales everything down (I just won a cultural victory last night as India while owning 3 cities) and your city count is no exception with high population and high numbers of cities contributing to unhappiness. The nice thing about puppet states is that they give you territory, access to the resources the unlock, and other types of income. The problem is that they build stuff without direction which lead to my irritation. At one point I had a supply of 4 Uranium. I built one Giant Death Robot (1 Uranium Used, 3 Unused). When that GDR finished building I was going to start a second one but I had no Uranium left. I hover over my Uranium resource icon and see 0 Uranium, 4 used, 0 unused. Turns out my puppets decided to go ahead and build nuclear reactors.

My victory as India humored me. After I had won, the only opponent (Siam) went to war with the city-state of Belgrade. At the time I had very good relations with all 4 city-states in the game of which three were military city states. Since I wasn't hostile with Siam at all and they showed no inclination of attacking me, I gifted every gift unit from a city state to Belgrade. When I had nothing worth producing I would produce units just to gift them to Belgrade. I was vastly more advanced, tech-wise, than Siam so Belgrade was running around with infantry and tanks while Siam was using not so advanced units. The result? Belgrade overran and destroyed all but the Siamese capitol (which they took over). I also tried gifting an atomic bomb to Belgrade but I couldn't figure out how to so I expect you cannot gift atomic weapons to city-states.

Posted by: Dumori Sep 28 2010, 04:04 PM

You should have gifted the real good stuf in small numbers to Siam if you could and give Belgrade aton of mediocre stuff and watch the carnage.

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 28 2010, 05:03 PM

Why? City-states don't start wars only other Civilizations start wars. It was in my best interest to have Belgrade wipe out Siam.

Posted by: Doc Chase Sep 28 2010, 07:06 PM

What tech level is Uncle Tom's Cabin? It worked in the movie!

Posted by: Dumori Sep 28 2010, 09:59 PM

best interest schimtrest. By the sounds of it you have the ability to wipe the victor any way. Play for fun not victory.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 29 2010, 02:45 PM

Right. Which is ironic, because a well-built tactical nuke really is just a big, light bomb.

Your proposed mechanic for second-strike backlash is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. The big risk is that it could be unbalancing, but I guess that depends on how the rest of the game is structured (the risk of not getting the first strike will prevent someone from stockpiling huge numbers of nukes before firing, so then the question is "how massive is the effect of one to three nukes").

~J

Posted by: Backgammon Sep 29 2010, 04:28 PM

I would promptly nuke anyone that got upset with me nuking another civ. No one would complain after that. Yeeesss....

Posted by: nezumi Sep 29 2010, 05:05 PM

That's what the game needs - MAD. Some technology that lets you set a trigger-response condition. "If nuclear launch detected, retaliate with X weapons at Y targets". THAT would be awesome.

Posted by: StealthSigma Sep 29 2010, 05:17 PM

Side note. Japan is ludicrously powerful in small maps in the early game.

Push to iron, make sure I got some then push to be able to make Samurai. They're very potent and you have the Japanese advantage of fighting at full strength when wounded. It makes it really easy for 2-3 Samurai to push around an opponent.

Posted by: Fix-it Sep 29 2010, 07:47 PM

I think Bushido makes Japan a bit OP in most eras.

Posted by: Voran Sep 30 2010, 09:49 PM

Which...oddly seems to make some sense. For such a relatively small nation, Japan did surprisingly well on the world stage, world war 2 etc. On another note, I'm avoiding getting this game for at least another couple weeks, as I have some term paper stuff for grad school, and I KNOW this game would manage to suck hours of focus out of me

Posted by: Kagetenshi Sep 30 2010, 11:22 PM

It's really not that small—Japan larger than, say, Germany or the UK. More impressive, I think, is the comebacks Japan managed to stage first against the stagnation of two hundred and fifty years of heavily controlled trade (and during the late renaissance/early industrial period, no less) and then against the devastation of the war.

~J

Posted by: hobgoblin Oct 1 2010, 12:03 AM

well the first boom came out of a militarization of the nation (basically a modern variant of what had run the place for the last 100+ years more or less) in much the same way that the nazis bootstrapped the post-ww1 german economy. The second was probably helped along by the korean war, as there was a need for a staging ground for bombers and logistics.

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 1 2010, 12:47 PM

Japan's success is great in light of their supply of natural resources for war efforts.

I completed a Diplomatic victory last night. I've done Domination [Japan], Diplomatic [Russia], and Cultural [India] so far. I was getting worried about whether or not I would be able to get the victory because I blew my money on allying city-states for votes a bit earlier than I should have and was a few turns away from losing them as allies.

Between two turns I had 6 civilization ask me to declare war on Germany [England, Aztec, India, Persia, Japan, and France]. I don't think most of the world liked Germany much. I was rated #4 in military which is a tad silly considering my "army" consisted of 2 Destroyers out exploring the world, and three infantry (one garrisoning each of my 3 cities). I'm sure Germany wasn't even close to a threat to my cities, they had defensive values of well over 60 each when Germany's cities were running about 20. I just didn't want all my tile improvements to get blown up nor did I want to build an army to push back Germany.

I don't think I could have pulled off a science victory in that game because of how quickly I got squished out of expanding by Aztec and Germany.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 1 2010, 03:00 PM

That's certainly true.

I made the correction mostly because there seems to be a common notion that Japan is much smaller than it is—one I held myself until I happened to discover that there are more native Japanese speakers than native German speakers.

~J

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 1 2010, 07:12 PM

People is not a natural resource that is in short supply in Japan.

Posted by: Dumori Oct 1 2010, 07:47 PM

Its probably due to both its island nature and distortion on maps due to longitude/latitude and likely the fact that tall+thin looks smaller than short+wide

Posted by: Hocus Pocus Oct 1 2010, 09:15 PM

thought about buying this game while at best buy today, sounds like its good.

Posted by: Fix-it Oct 2 2010, 05:13 AM

it still has some bugs, and the hardcore civers are divided on the "social policies" system.

the new military unit system and besieging cities is nice. stacking 10+ units was dumb.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 2 2010, 06:13 AM

Tell me more about social policies, please.

Posted by: Backgammon Oct 2 2010, 08:11 PM

You basically pick 1bonus at a time to apply to your civ. There are five politics, which grant a bonus just for unlocking them, then each has a tree of bonuses to unlock. Like there is a military branch that gives combat bonuses, or a growth policy that gives stuff like +1 production per city, etc. You unlock each of these by using culture points. After x amount of culture you get to unlock 1 thing. It's cool, allows you to Taylor your civ to you play style and goals

Posted by: Fix-it Oct 3 2010, 03:55 AM

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_cities.html

I haven't really gotten very far towards a social victory, because I tend to expand with a sprawling empire, which slows cultural growth.

edit2: on-topic utube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 3 2010, 04:27 AM

Downloaded the demo. I like the policy-tree mechanic more than I liked the static choices of Civ4. I'll probably wait for the price to drop a bit, but I'll definitely pick up Civ5 at some point.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 3 2010, 12:32 PM

Sounds similar to picking your form of government in Civ II, though it kind of had fairly distinct 'this government style is the best' options.

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 4 2010, 12:08 PM

Civ V features 10 social policy tracks. Here's a breakdown of how the system works.

Every city will generate a number of culture points per turn. Culture points have a dual purpose. The first and primary purpose is to fuel the acquisition of social policies. The second purpose is to foster natural expansion of your territory by acquiring tiles.

The amount of culture points necessary to get a social policy goes up as you acquire new social policies. The culture point cost also goes up as acquire more cities (each additional city increases the cost by a certain percent and I'm not sure if this percent varies). So if your first social policy unlocks tradition for 10 culture points, your second social policy can unlock a second social policy or get one of the first tier social policies in the Tradition tree. Social policies provide passive benefits to your civilization. For instance, unlocking Liberty cuts the training time of your settlers in half. Generally, each track is focused towards providing a benefit in an area. Additionally, each social track requires you to be in a certain age to acquire. You start out with access to just Tradition, Liberty, and Honor.

Tradition: Excellent for small city count civilizations. It provides a lot of boosts to your capital city and some territory benefits in order to allow you to better compete with larger civilizations.
Liberty: Excellent for high city count civilizations. Some of the bonuses are good regardless (+1 culture per city, +1 production per city) but the others really shine with more cities.
Honor: Excellent for military focused civilizations. Provides a lot of boosts that increase combat effectiveness or ancillary effects related to soldiers.
Piety: Perfect complement to small civilizations focusing on culture. One of the final social policies grants free social policies.
Patronage: Perfect complement to civilizations seeking a diplomatic victory. Provides a lot of benefits related to city-states.
Commerce: Provides you money or saves you money. It's not geared towards any specific victory type, but all of its social policies are useful.
Freedom: Another perfect complement to a cultural victory. This has two major boons to culture. The first is doubling culture production in any city that has a world wonder. The second is to halve the cultural point cost of all future social policies.
Rationalism: The science track. Everything about it is related to science or because of science producing buildings. Universities give happiness, a happy society increases science rate. In addition, you can get 2 free technologies from the social track as well.
Order: This appears to be a track geared towards expansive civilizations. It has a policy that decreases unhappiness from the number of cities you have. It increase your production rate as well gives bonuses to your units while in your territory.
Autocracy: This is the mack daddy of military policies. Decreased cost for purchasing your units (33% from this and 25% from Commerce). You reduce the unhappiness from annexed cities (though you could always raze or make them a puppet). Causes your damaged units to have +25% damage. Doubles your strategic resource output (necessary for the better units). Finally, there's the one policy you activate just prior to going to war with a major enemy. For 20 turns you get a 33% bonus to your combat strength. These are huge bonuses, but they come at a cost that I explain below.

You can pick and choose from policies as you see fit with two exceptions. The first exception is that you must have acquired all the prerequisite social policies in previous tiers for a track in order to access latter tiers. The second exception is with the Liberty, Freedom, and Autocracy tracks along with the Piety and Rationalism tracks. If you take Autocracy, you cannot take Liberty or Freedom without giving up all the social policies you've earned in Autocracy. The same exists for Piety and Rationalism.

The easiest path to a social victory is using India and going the Bollywood method. The Bollywood method is to obtain the cultural victory with only 3 cities. India is perfect for this because the unhappiness you gain from population is halved, while the unhappiness you get from cities is doubled. When I did this method I was earning my 19th and higher social policies at a rate of about one every 10 to 12 turns.

Posted by: Voran Oct 4 2010, 12:51 PM

Currently in turn 218 or so of a marathon huge civ war on an alternate earth-type world. Playing as the ruskies. Have managed to fend for myself well, I'm roughly 1 'era' ahead of my competition, midway through medieval while everyone else is either middle classical or just entered classical. For giggles I downloaded the 'always get xp from barbarians' mod, and cranked barbarian spawn up to max. I've managed to fend off the wandering hordes, and gain some nice xp from them. Wiped out the arabian civ a few turns ago, as they were uncomfortably close in one of my border areas. The USA civ is also right under me, and I'm thinking of keeping them sorta isolated while they build up, then swoop in and take them.

Only at crappy trieme level naval forces at the moment, and it seems like there's a few civilizations that are advancing more or less unhindered in some unknown part of the map, they're the ones that are at higher tech level than the others, tho still behind me. Only have 1 coastal ship myself, but since he's been more or less solo in his barbarian hunting, he's actually pretty powerful. Hope to keep him alive long enough to upgrade him to a frigate or something in another era or two.

Posted by: nezumi Oct 4 2010, 01:46 PM

Wow, those sound awesome.

Do social policies cause conflicts between nations? For instance, are two high-liberty nations going to naturally fight against an autocracy? (I'd love to set up a WWII scenario which extends beyond just setting military units out. I'd love to have a scenario where the nations are fighting because one nation is doing X horrible atrocity, rather than just because the game is programmed to say 'turn 15, you declare war'.)

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 4 2010, 02:24 PM

I'm not aware of any overt tensions caused by differing social policies. If you avoid Autocracy and either Piety or Rationalism, you can get 8 of the 10 social policies fully researched. It's not like religion in Civ 4.

Posted by: Fix-it Oct 4 2010, 03:03 PM

no. social policies do not cause standing changes with other civs.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 4 2010, 04:27 PM

I hope not—it certainly isn't supported by real-world examples!

~J

Posted by: pbangarth Oct 4 2010, 06:16 PM

That's because 'high-liberty' nations really aren't. Oh shit. Political content.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 4 2010, 06:46 PM

Yeah, there are no historical real world examples of embargoes or wars happening because of forms of government. There wasn't a cold war because of the different ideals behind communism and capitalism. And there certainly haven't been any democratic nations that have bombed other countries because they didn't like their form of government.

One thing that I did just realize about Civ in general is that all wars are basically waged for personal gain as opposed to religious values or anything like that.

P.S. Downloading the demo on Steam right now. I'm kind of hoping I don't like it, because I really don't want to end up spending $50 on it.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 4 2010, 06:48 PM

Oh, there certainly have been. Of course, they weren't always bombing autocracies to set up democracy…

~J

Posted by: Karoline Oct 4 2010, 07:37 PM

*coughwasusingsarcasmcough*

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 4 2010, 07:48 PM

So was everyone else.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 4 2010, 08:02 PM

No they weren't! >.>

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 4 2010, 08:03 PM

Uh huh.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Oct 4 2010, 08:19 PM

I got that. My argument stands—different ideologies may make enemies, but the support for similar ideologies making friends is much weaker.

~J

Posted by: nezumi Oct 4 2010, 08:44 PM

Exactly. That's one aspect of Civ which has always made me a little bonkers. I really want to see A and B go to war because of a difference in beliefs, and for no other reason.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 4 2010, 08:57 PM

How is that different from real life? "They don't share our values" might be the propaganda used to drum up support, but the vast majority of wars have been fought for material gain. Anytime you see two countries fighting, you can bet your ass that somebody, somewhere is either getting rich(er) or about to get rich(er).

Posted by: Dumori Oct 4 2010, 09:11 PM

Or is at least hoping to. Its not worth the cost logically or not if you gain nothing but you just dislike them. To start a fight though I will argue that this added wealth may not be metrial. Some times the chance of respect will tip the scales though not very often on a large scale. Lucky when views really coilide they tend to also have a taking something away from one side aspect.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 4 2010, 10:02 PM

Oh, didn't realize that is what you meant. But there is plenty of support for it actually. Remember how all those communist countries banded together after WWII? And all the democratic ones did the same? There is quite a bit of support for similar ideologies banding together.


I'm thinking more holy wars. Crusades, terror attacks, 'liberation', etc. Alot of these are done for the sake of religion or ideology as opposed to material gain.

I didn't play it much, but I know religion was fairly important in Civ IV. Would have been a great opportunity for holy wars and such.

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 5 2010, 11:14 AM

I suggest you play Civ IV then. That one featured religion. Woe is me that one game where I was playing as Taoist Japan and Islamic France decided they didn't quite like me because I was Taoist and consequently nuked my cities despite having an awesome history of no war.

Posted by: Voran Oct 5 2010, 11:42 AM

Man, I think the last version of Civ I played before this was #2 (holy crap, 1996). My marathon russian game continues, up to like 260 turns or so, still in BC I just entered the renaissance, one of my opponents just entered medieval, rest are classical, I just wiped the 4 cities of the United States off the map (well...annexed 2, razed 2). Thus far I am noticing some odd placement issues from my AI foes, two civs so far have decided to cluster their primary cities, yet then start one waaay off away from the others, practically in the middle of territory held by me and 2 other people. Also, AI civs aren't so good about maximizing their tiles, the USA decided to place two cities practically on top of each other...

I'm rather enjoying the rapid spawn of barbarian tribes, its been a challenge keeping fog of war areas away from my cities, without diverting military units to just sit in hexes to maintain visuals. At the moment I need those military units to help clean up my borders, so its a nice mini-running game within my own borders. On the other hand, being able to count on a steady supply of barbarians to farm xp from has resulted in some fairly powerful military units with the fun 'multi-attack' ranking powers.

Posted by: nezumi Oct 5 2010, 01:28 PM

Second question, does Civ V support things like rebellions, etc.? Rhye's and Fall had this, where when a civilization gets too big and isn't producing enough culture, it literally schisms, and colonists declare independence. In Civ IV and prior, the only way you could get that was if your capital falls. So you can never have things like the United States actually breaking off unless you actually destroy London first.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 5 2010, 01:52 PM

Somehow the Civ4 game I played had me as the cradle of every religion. Like, in the same damn city, even. Boggled my mind.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 5 2010, 02:20 PM

Yeah, that used to be my goal: found every last religion. A couple are trickily-close to each other, so you usually miss one, even on the lower difficulties.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 5 2010, 02:26 PM

Rest of the world: "GIVE US SAN FRANSISCO IT HAS EVERYTHING"
Me: o.O Nnnnno? O hey! I can see everything in your cities! Hooray! Poor man's satellite view!

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 5 2010, 02:42 PM

Well, no one ever had the audacity to ask for a city.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 5 2010, 02:59 PM

Just one did.

Just the one time.

They gave me their cities in return, save one that inexplicably fell into the sea as the bay expanded one night.

Very strange.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 5 2010, 04:49 PM

I've got to say that I really love the fact that cities can actually defend themselves. I love how my loan city managed to fend off about 10+ American troops long enough that they actually paid me to accept a peace treaty. I had like maybe 5 troops in total, and most of them were really far away from that particular city

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 5 2010, 05:58 PM

Played for the first time yesterday in order to get smarter within the next two weeks. Still processing the experience. Very different than before. Does not appear to require a scratchpad. Will comment later.

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 5 2010, 06:19 PM

That's rather impressive. Unless your city was heavily invested in the buildings that raise your defense score or the troops were attacking in series rather then en mass, 10 troops would have been able to easily capture the city in 2-3 turns (barring any extreme difference in unit tech levels).

Posted by: Voran Oct 5 2010, 10:51 PM

I wonder how much gameplay would change if you couldn't stack dozens of wonders in one city. I guess I understand gameplay is leaned towards that, your most productive cities (which tend to be your first ones, simply due to population and hopefully good choices on land location) make the best builders, so then you end up with maybe 3 cities that largely just build wonders inbetween times you're upgrading their production facilities. I mean, I suppose there's nothing really preventing a place from having 6+ wonders all by itself, but sometimes it does feel a little off.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 6 2010, 06:08 AM

I think it had something to do with it still being fairly early in the game, and my city was a quite large population. I think population was 12 or so, and they mostly had spearmen and such. On the few attacks they did with their melee troops they did 1 damage and took 5+. Overall they just weren't very aggressive with the attack. I'm not sure if it was because they were trying to starve me out, or because the difficulty was only set to 2. They didn't even fire with their archers all the time, often just repositioning them. I wonder if the fact that they had 12ish units trying to attack a single city was messing with the AI's movement. Oh, I did have a trireme and a horseman in the city as well. My horseman wasn't allowed to attack though, which kind of sucked.

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 6 2010, 02:17 PM

Your horseman was probably garrisoned. If the unit shield is on the left side, it's garrisoned. If the unit shield is on the right side, it isn't.

I just played a game last night (continents). with 8 AI total. Somehow I landed on a continent featuring myself and India. The remaining 6 AI were all on the other continent. Once I saw this, I cranked my production over to a metric crapton of Spearman and Iroquois Warriors (along with a few warriors as I was waiting for my 2nd city's production value to go up due to population increases). During this time, India expanded to about 5 cities total (kind of crazy early expansion for an AI). I positioned all my units for a hit on India's capital for two reasons. The first reason, and primary one, was that this was the highest defense city. I knew my casualty rate would be higher attacking it, hence why I massed a bunch of Iroquois Warriors and Spearmen, but some of my units would get valuable experience and India would draw back most of its military units to defend the city. The second reason is that the AI tends to be a lot more compromising in negotiating a peace treaty after you knock out its capital. After taking out their capital, they offered me a peace treaty that gave me all but one of their remaining cities (which happened to be tucked directly between my two cities borders touched). I took it and promptly ordered those cities razed (they were in poor positions, or suffered severe overlap with another city). You can't raze the capital, but it was positioned nicely so that there wasn't any overlapping with my cities and likely wouldn't overlap with other cities I would be building. After the peace treaty expired, I declared war on India and took the last city for razing.

Now I'm the only civilization on my continent leaving the other 6 AI to compete with each other.

Posted by: pbangarth Oct 6 2010, 02:34 PM

So I guess you will be concentrating on your navy, huh?

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 6 2010, 03:22 PM

No point, it's a combination of city building and research since I only enabled a scientific victory. A continent is a bit large to protect with an early navy and the other 6 civs will be mostly occupied with each other.

Posted by: pbangarth Oct 6 2010, 04:17 PM

Is that a deep church bell I hear ringing in the distance?

Posted by: Karoline Oct 6 2010, 07:21 PM

So, I saw others talking about how Bushido from the Japanese is overpowerd? I'll tell you what is really overpowered: The Germans on a huge marathon map. I've literally built two units: a scout and a single archer, and yet I currently have about 15 units thanks to barbarians joining me. I've used my army to conquer England, a city-state (gaining me friendship with two other city-states) and just conquered one of Rome's 3 cities. No one else has more than a couple armies because it takes like 40 turns to create one unit, and I can generally get a unit every dozen or so turns from the barbs.

Only current problem is that I have about 11 unhappiness, but luckily I'm in the middle of improving on 3 luxury resources, so I hope I can get my people happy soon.

Oh, and I'm on the highest difficulty that doesn't give the AI bonuses (5 I think).

And yes, I made sure to have my conquered cities be puppet states, but there is just too much population to handle.

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 6 2010, 08:01 PM

That's a situational benefit that is very strong in early eras but pitifully weak in later eras due to two factors. First, as the territory of civilizations expands there's less land for barbarians to spawn on. Second, barbarians don't "tech up" as quickly as the AI. Bushido is effective throughout the entire game.

Posted by: Dumori Oct 6 2010, 09:29 PM

Just build a navy any way you don't want some coalition or super power to try and crush you or such. Sure it might limit your victory lenght but even dediaation one cit to a navy could help a lot if you position your fleet as a deterrent and maybe even let you strike out if you need more land/resources.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 6 2010, 10:43 PM

That's true, it does drop off in effectiveness as time goes on due to more and more of the world being seen, but it is a tremendous advantage early on. It's kind of like Napoleon who has his advantage vanish entirely as soon as you research steam engine. Sure, it doesn't help you any more, but it has been a big boost up to that point.

Edit: Rawr! Game won't let me end my turn because one of my cities doesn't have anything building... because it is a newly acquired puppet state that is still under rebellion. Anyone know of a way to make the turn end regardless of any sort of 'may want to do this first' stuff? Or do I need to load up an autosave and hope it doesn't screw up again?

Posted by: Voran Oct 6 2010, 11:13 PM

Some thoughts. I'm kinda wishing there was a way to directly give technology to other states, instead of research pacts. I've noticed that as you pull ahead in the tech game, it becomes actually rather easy to pull WAY ahead, especially if the AIs fight amongst themselves while you remain more or less unmolested. Advances lead to more advances both in production and research, which further allow leaps in research/production, plus, by being ahead of everyone in the tech cycle, it generally means you're able to also work on Wonders before anyone else can even access them, which puts you more in the lead. Finally, the AI seems to be kinda a bully, it'll pick on you if you're weak, but if it thinks you're strong, it'll leave you alone, though it will send you 'angry messages' via diplomacy every so often. Basically you tell them to STFU and they don't do anything.

My initial 1 era lead has grown rather substantially, one just entered the renaissance, the rest are medieval, i'm....Russia in the modern age. Hell I just finished the manhattan project, and can shortly begin making atom bombs, while my next highest foe is using crossbows.

Which is why I kinda want to just throw them all an era or so worth of free tech, to make things interesting. At this rate, I'll have super giant death robots before they even have firearms.

I'm wondering it this is because marathon slows everything down, but consequently can lead to bigger gaps.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 7 2010, 01:32 AM

Yeah, I've noticed this. I hit someone with three culture bombs and they kept getting mad at me, but despite their massive army sitting on my border, they didn't actually attack me because they were way behind me in technology. Of course, that is likely less 'the AI is a bully' than 'the AI is smart'. I mean, how often do you attack an obviously superior civilization. I mean, is it worse to take a bit of abuse in the form of culture bombs, or get totally smashed into oblivion by a stronger force?

I had the same sort of thing on my standard speed game. I was in future era while everyone else was just barely discovering gunpowder. Think it has more to do with playstyle than game speed.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 7 2010, 01:37 AM

Yeah, I've always found the AI diplomacy to very realistic: annoying, random, senseless, and a waste of time.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 7 2010, 11:10 AM

I think it has actually gotten quite good. The AI is actually willing to make trades that aren't mostly one sided. Like I was about to capture America's capitol once, and so they offered all of their other cities (About half a dozen) and money (few hundred gold) in exchange for a peace treaty. It was perhaps too generous of them, but it certainly worked. They got to keep their capitol for the entire 10 turns of the treaty, and then I went to war and took the capitol anyway

P.S. Anyone interested in multiplayer games?

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 7 2010, 11:15 AM

Didn't need to. When I own the continent, I don't need to spend gold on strategically buying tiles. If I need a navy or army I just buy it up. The only egress onto my territory ended up by an opponent was when they slipped a settler through the one gap in my coastline of territory to establish a city. Once I achieved my science victory I went to town on the AI. I dropped nukes on their cities, then unleashed an army of Giant Death Robots to squash any remaining resistance. It also turned out that the map featured 3 continents rather than two. So it was 2 Civs, 3 Civs, 3 Civs per continent.

Posted by: Backgammon Oct 7 2010, 09:14 PM

I have starting playing King on pangea. Much more of a challenge, getting killed a lot. In civ 4 I had trouble with Prince. Now prince is easy, need king for a challenge

Posted by: Voran Oct 8 2010, 02:21 AM

I took to cheating, giving myself scads of gold which I then in turn donated to my enemies (a bit peeved at the 9999 transaction cap per exchange) in the hopes it would help boost their production, it sorta helped, but not enough to make me interested. I also decided that as soon as I could produce Giant Death Robots, I would just put everyone out of their misery. I feel a little bad, my nearest neighbor is the largest, but only at the level where its most powerful unit are swordsmen and elephant troops, which I kill with stealth bombers, helicopter gunships, rocket artillery. Then I send my death robots deep and cap cities (gunships make great city cappers too). In two rounds I've taken about 12 of the enemy cities, oneshotting all resistance. I tossed a nuke on their capital for giggles.

I figure my game will be over in about 50 turns or so, as I march through the world.

I'll definitely change some settings around next campaign, maybe start everyone's tech level a bit higher so at least by the time I'm rolling in death robots, my foes at least have tanks.

Posted by: Voran Oct 8 2010, 06:48 AM

dang, i think my game got too big. Running around 607 turns, and lags really hard, or about 1 in 4 times, crash to desk top. Think the memory leak gets too big or just trying to process too many things. Unfortunate, as I just wiped out the persians and was halfway through nuking the chinese.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 8 2010, 01:13 PM

What difficulty setting are you on? That could have alot to do with it.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 8 2010, 02:34 PM

Yeah, civ 5 seems really different/easier than civ 4. Not sure if that's good or bad.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 8 2010, 08:54 PM

Can't say that for sure till you've beaten it on deity level. And when playing multiplayer, difficulty is entirely different. Play me and we'll see how easy the game is

P.S. The content I'm on looks suspiciously like Italy, except that it is an island instead of a peninsula.

Posted by: silva Oct 9 2010, 11:32 PM

Play Alpha Centauri.

Posted by: nezumi Oct 9 2010, 11:59 PM

I really prefer the historical setting of Civ. Plus, I'd like the ability to change ideological backgrounds to meet diplomatic situations. I guess I just want religion to carry more weight.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 10 2010, 02:17 AM

Well, really, everyone should play Alpha Centauri. It's an awesome game.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 10 2010, 04:37 AM

Seconded.

Also, I find it funny how the other civ's leaders take the time out of their busy schedules to inform me that my army is weak. They don't actually take advantage of this fact to attack me, they just feel like telling me every so often.

I suppose it is true, given I only have a bit over a dozen units, and about half of them are brutes in the year 1600, but I make up for it by being the only power on my continent. But now I've gone and established a beachhead on France by taking a city-state. France's continent is about 3 times as big as mine, and contains about 5 times as many cities thanks to nearly all the civs having started there, and France having conquered and puppeted them.

My favorite part of the battle? My army is lead by an ex-scout turned crossbowman who heals 2 damage every turn, even when attacking, and has a +100% bonus to defense, on top of retaining the 'ignore movement penalties' ability. As soon as I finish railroads I'm going to work on rifling so I can up grade him to a rifleman and put his abilities to better use.

My current problem? Getting units to the beachhead. It is about 10 turns by boat (After I've spent several turns shipping them to the western part of my continent), and I need escorts to stop random barbarian ships capturing them. It is making progress over there currently non-existent. Oh well, flight is just over the horizon, I may wait till I can do air raids.

Posted by: silva Oct 10 2010, 09:21 PM

Alpha Centauri has this too.

What is keeping me from trying Civ5 is the frustrated experience I had with Civ4 where most CPU controlled Civs soon or later group together to destroy you without any plausible in-setting reason, but for the sole purpose of not letting you/the player to win the game. The only Civ-type games that gave me a genuine feeling of "being there" - where CPU actions are backed up by actual in-setting motivations, and not purely gamist ones - were Alpha Centauri and Galactic Civilizations 2.

So, how is Civ5 in this aspect ?

Posted by: pbangarth Oct 10 2010, 09:40 PM

My experience of game AIs in the past has been that the 'artificial intelligence' is increased at higher levels not by making the program think better but by giving timing/power advantages to the machine-run opponents and getting them to gang up on the player's side sooner.

So, I wonder, too. Is Civ5 any different?

Posted by: Backgammon Oct 11 2010, 12:22 AM

At difficulty King and onwards, the Ai is artificially boosted, but they don't gang up for the sake of ganging up. I've had a game-long good relationship with Russia, which in Civ 4 would eventually have fucked me arbitrarely. But now, the AI understands our friendship benefits us both.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 11 2010, 02:04 AM

I'm still on a marathon game at prince level, but so far I haven't had the AI attacking me arbitrarily. Actually I've entered a few secret pacts against the 'apparent' super power in my world, France.

I have noticed that the AI seems to factor in military more than anything else when figuring out who the biggest threat is. It makes sense from one perspective, but they ignore the fact that I'm the most technology advanced, likely the most cultural, and despite my low city count, they are all exceedingly built up, with all 10+ populations (Compared to France who mostly has cities of 6 or less population). I also have enough gold stockpiled to pop up 2-3 top end units at a moment's notice (A huge potential advantage in marathon games where building a single unit can take 20+ turns).

Going to go back to it for a bit, now, can't wait to see if France or I wins, or if someone else manages an upset.

Posted by: nezumi Oct 11 2010, 05:20 PM

So... How about Europa Universalis? Anyone with gripes against Civ have anything good or bad to say about EU?

Posted by: silva Oct 11 2010, 05:35 PM

I say the two dont really compare.

Europa Universalis is a historical simulation series, while Civilization is a strategy series loosely based on history. In the first history is enforced as (almost) shackles; in the second history is not enforced at all, its (almost) just color.

I like both.



P.S: two of my favorite games of all-time are from these series - Arsenal of Democracy (the WW2 version of EU ) and Alpha Centauri (the Sci-fi version of Civ).

Posted by: X-Kalibur Oct 11 2010, 05:58 PM

The last Civ I played was... well... Civ. For the record, I still miss DOS.

That being said, I read mention of mechs and nukes so I may have to look into Civ 5 now. Although I doubt it will grab me as well as the original.

Posted by: hobgoblin Oct 11 2010, 06:19 PM

dosbox?

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 11 2010, 09:03 PM

For the record, X-COM > Civ 1.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 11 2010, 09:30 PM

X Com is effing impenatrable. Then again I never owned the manual.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Oct 11 2010, 09:49 PM

DOSBOX? I played Sid Meier's Civilization when it was relevant =P I used to actually run DOS.

Also yes, X-Com is quite possibly the best PC strategy game ever made. Especially with the patch to fix Super Human mode. (Also, you can buy it on Steam these days and it runs quite nicely)

Posted by: silva Oct 11 2010, 10:20 PM

Together with Jagged Alliance 2, yes.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 11 2010, 10:46 PM

I would make a point of getting my fast h2h specialist captured so Eliott would leave the cell door unlocked and I could make a suicide strike on Dessie right there.

It was a hoot and a half, let me tell you.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 11 2010, 11:33 PM

*slap* "Elliot, you idiot!"

Posted by: Voran Oct 11 2010, 11:51 PM

Oddly playing Civ 5 caused me to start playing a game I hadn't touched in ages, but had been sitting in my Steam Library: Sword of the Stars.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 12 2010, 01:46 AM

I have Sword of the Stars on Impulse. I wonder if the two versions are compatible?

Posted by: Voran Oct 12 2010, 06:48 AM

Not sure, doubt it though. I have Sins of a Solar Empire on Impulse, haven't played it in awhile tho....

Heh, my Sword of the Stars game atm is pretty awesome, I got the option to research AI less than 15 turns into the game, which then opened up AI virus, AI fire control, industrial boost and financial boost. And I didn't trigger an AI rebellion. So in under the first 30 odd turns, I had a ridiculous buff to all future combat, industrial production, research, and money income. Some games I never get that lucky. Heck this one in general has been pretty awesome, as near as I can tell, i unlocked the best possible shields, armor, even boost abilities. In a way, it was like my Civ game, I've almost nearly cleaned out the entire research tree in under 115 turns or so, and my defensive ring around planets can pretty much hold off a fleet all by its lonesome, when I add a few cruisers and a dreadnaught, it gets ridiculous.

Posted by: nezumi Oct 12 2010, 02:00 PM

For the record... You're wrong

If they made X-Com about three times as fast, maybe they'd be comparable. But I spent so much time walking four steps at a go to make alternating columns, it just made me bonkers.

And then my saved game crashed because I engaged a downed ship while another ship was in pursuit mode.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 12 2010, 02:16 PM

Gameplay more flexible than 4. Getting to last leg of my first game on chieftan.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 12 2010, 02:39 PM

For the record... Your face is wrong.

I never had problems with my games when I was engaging downed ships while others were on pursuit.

I also never made columns - one good grenade toss and it was fission mailed. Did have a good pair of psychics stay in the carrier, and my guys with flying armor would bust in through the top, scout the enemy, and drop stuns to bring back prisoners. Anything that didn't get stunned got MC'd and would finish 'scouting' for me.

That was pretty late in the game, though. Early on was a scorched earth policy with laser rifles and tanks. DGIF.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Oct 12 2010, 05:55 PM

Go and google the X-Com Let's Play. I promse that you'll thank me for it.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 12 2010, 06:59 PM

I tots will when I'm not on the corporate thin client. The IT department strikes me as a crew that plays Wall Street Kid, and perhaps Madden on the weekends.

Posted by: sabs Oct 12 2010, 07:00 PM

Sigh when I worked at a beltway bandit helpdesk/support staff we used to stay after hours and play need for speed on the corp lan

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 12 2010, 07:13 PM

These clients couldn't handle it. Now, if I was working for Charter...

...I know a guy, and he'd have fun setting up a few dedicated servers.

Posted by: Whipstitch Oct 12 2010, 08:21 PM

X-COM ate up a ridiculous amount of my childhood. Is there anything High Explosives can't fix?

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 12 2010, 08:24 PM

Alien alloys. But that's what the plasma explosives were for.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Oct 12 2010, 10:19 PM

Alien Grenades, High Explosives, and Plasma weapons couldn't eat through a UFO hull plating on ground missions. Blaster bombs, on the other hand... were the sheer bane of my existence if the enemy had one.

Posted by: Voran Oct 13 2010, 12:54 AM

Much as I like turn based, I did kinda like that in Xcom Apoc you could go 'real time'. I remember (at least for the earlier levels when the aliens weren't quite uber yet) sending in a squad just armed with stunners setting them in a central hall arrayed to cover all entry points and then sped the game up, letting all the aliens wander into my fields of fire and stunning the crap out of them. Good money maker.

Doesn't work well in later levels as they start using explosives, or those cultist dudes also with explosives, but its a good way to quickly build up a nest egg for research and stuff.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 13 2010, 12:44 PM

BLASTER BOMBS that's what they were. By the end I didn't really have that problem (but Elerium was).

Either the FBL's would annihilate the power sources on the target, or the plasma cannons would. I could just fly in through the ceiling.

X-COM Apoc was...all right. It had some interesting aspects to it, but it didn't feel as epic as the previous games were.

Posted by: X-Kalibur Oct 13 2010, 04:33 PM

Apocalypse was interesting in that, aside from having a real time system (that if you got used to was generally superior to turn based. Less chance of getting screwed by a popper or brainsucker) the difficulty wasn't actually affected by your choice at the start. Well, not really. Higher difficulties merely lowered your starting and weekly income from sponsors. The AI was in no way affected... they MIGHT start using higher levels of tech sooner but not from what I remember reading.

There are quite a few good mods out for Apoc, however, they really change up how the relations with companies and the likes works.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 13 2010, 04:37 PM

France is down to its last city. It took a while taking all 40ish cities, but it went alot faster once my bombers got over there. Now I have to decide if I want to conquer the remaining two civs, build the Apollo program, or try for a cultural victory. I love how everyone is still telling me that my army is weak. My 12th level mechanized infantry might disagree with that when everyone else is still using riflemen for the most part, I've seen some barbs and city-states with infantry.

Anyone else feel paratroopers would be way cooler if they could attack after paradropping?

Posted by: Warlordtheft Oct 13 2010, 05:14 PM

Yeah-though once you mastered that tech and had enough of a Psi corp the larger ships became easy prey. And the smaller ones are no contest.

Spot alien near LZ.
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted.
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted.
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted--enter the ship (or spots were the aliens are grouped)
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted--move up to the command center
Mind control
Move alien till another is spotted. See where the aliens are located.

Move three troops out 1 by 1. Firing blaster bombs after they move
1st one Fires and hits Ufo near the top level of the ship to puch a hole.
MC'd alien moves in and spots all troops in side if needed.
2nd trooper fires and takes out the aliens there.
3rd trooper fires for good measure.

Collect Eleareaum.

Not I would let the aliens land intact if they were not doing a terror mission.

Posted by: Doc Chase Oct 13 2010, 05:24 PM

Heh. Mine was:

Mind control alien, walk until I find another alien
Mind control al-hey, he's got a stun ball launcher!
Fire stunball launcher, knock out 3-4 other aliens
Mind control ali-hey, he's got a blaster bomb launcher!
'Inadvertantly' destroy large swaths of ship

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 13 2010, 05:48 PM

Er... isn't that sort of the entire point of paratroopers?

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 13 2010, 06:09 PM

I think the point is to get ground troops in by air.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 13 2010, 06:35 PM

But if they can't attack on the same turn they drop, you can't drop them within the defense radius of an enemy city, so they have to march some distance overland anyway. That kind of defeats the purpose.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 13 2010, 06:46 PM

*shrug* Do they have to march all the way from your city? No. That's the purpose.

No, they don't fulfill the purpose of 'direct sneak attack by air', but that not *their* purpose. Maybe it would be nice, but it's not very historical, right?

Posted by: Karoline Oct 13 2010, 07:06 PM

I would say paratroopers fighting shortly after landing is fairly historical. They were often used to be put behind enemies lines and set up ambushes and resistances and stuff like that, but those don't work very well the way Civ is set up.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 13 2010, 07:24 PM

Yes, but (despite the 'years' system), I think that's what dropping them close already demonstrates. After all, don't they have to regroup and everything first? They don't get dropped *on* the target.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Oct 13 2010, 07:37 PM

LOL, yeah, my Red Dawn fantasies were busted after I found out that paratroopers had to wait a year to attack after paradropping. One thing I did like about the previous civ was how you could airlift units.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 13 2010, 08:02 PM

You don't have transport planes in Civ5?

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 13 2010, 08:07 PM

Yeah, airdrop and (less useful) helicopters were handy for moving around that big empire in 4. :/ What about shuttling between airbases/airfields?

Posted by: silva Oct 13 2010, 10:11 PM

Nah, give me Alpha Centauri´s planet-wide orbital-insertion drop-pod troopers anytime.

Posted by: Tanegar Oct 13 2010, 11:51 PM

QFT.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 14 2010, 12:11 AM

Agreed. It is a huge pain having to ferry troops across the water for 15 turns to get from my continent to my enemy's, and that's after 4-5 turns on the railroads to get from the center to the shore in the first place. I can't help but think that a boying could do it a bit quicker

Posted by: StealthSigma Oct 14 2010, 11:20 AM

Cooler? Yes. Realistic? No.

Paratroopers have to regroup after being dropped in.

--



Waaah?

That's what layering your entire empire with railroads was for.

Posted by: Voran Oct 14 2010, 11:38 AM

I do really like the helicopter gunships. They've got good movement points, gain experience like a 'melee' unit (though it is wierd to see pikemen or swordsmen swinging their weapons to try and fend off the helicopter attack) and can be very useful for scouting. Only problem is they're land bound (can't fly over coastal or open water).

Posted by: Yerameyahu Oct 14 2010, 02:15 PM

StealthSigma, you obviously aren't fighting far and fast enough into multiple enemy empires. Airdropped tanks quickly get well beyond your own pristine rail network (which of course I have).

Posted by: nezumi Oct 14 2010, 03:10 PM

In my experience (Civ4), paratroopers were ideal for reinforcing defensive positions and cities, or for taking an empty city after it had already been bombed into submission. I never used them for real attacking.

Posted by: Karoline Oct 14 2010, 11:16 PM

They can't take an 'undefended' city in Civ 5 though, so that limits that.

The thing is that the alternate for them is stronger and moves 2x as far when not paradropping. It makes them exceedingly limited. Even more so since Civ 5 railroads are no longer free passes, and they cost gold to maintain, so you can't just coat your entire empire in them very easily.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Nov 3 2010, 02:05 PM

Got a look at it yesterday at a friends house. Played a few turns, looks nice but would be worried as it crashed his PC (might be due to PC performance) and that is why he stopped playing it.

Do any of you have issues with the game crashing?

Posted by: StealthSigma Nov 3 2010, 02:12 PM

Not when I run the game under DX9.

Posted by: Karoline Nov 3 2010, 07:22 PM

I have that problem in my current marathon game. I'm not sure what is causing it, but it keeps happening on the same turn. Haven't tried it again for a while though.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Nov 3 2010, 07:45 PM

No crashing after I disabled the intro movie.

Posted by: Karoline Nov 3 2010, 10:17 PM

Hmm, didn't know you could do that. I should do that as it takes a while to cancel out of anyway.

Posted by: StealthSigma Nov 4 2010, 11:44 AM

You just sit there at a black screen for a couple seconds. They use the opening video to hide loading so there's no real difference between hitting escape and waiting for it to go to menu and disabling the intro. Unless of course you hit escape after the loading is done.

Posted by: Karoline Nov 4 2010, 05:11 PM

Ah, that's cool. Most things use opening video to delay the time when they have to start actually loading anything.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Nov 22 2010, 04:29 AM

Heh, I just realized that Civ 5 lets your civilization build Metal Gear.

Pump up music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUHJsU_ooWQ&feature=related

Posted by: hobgoblin Nov 22 2010, 10:54 PM

Never gotten that far, as the game becomes a crashy crawl around the time i discover oil...

Posted by: Karoline Nov 23 2010, 02:01 AM

I never seem to have access to radioactive material

Posted by: sabs Nov 23 2010, 05:18 PM

I find that the early eras go way too fast.

iI hit renaissance by 300 ad and then I'm in the industrial era by 1500, and yet I still only have 5 cities

Posted by: hobgoblin Nov 23 2010, 07:10 PM

if i have studies the tech tree right, this can happen if one go down the main path heavily.

Posted by: hobgoblin Dec 16 2010, 11:00 PM

Seems there is a big as patch coming, and one of the entries talk about something that sounds like a memory leak in the save game system. I wonder if that could be why i had issues with crashes late in the game...

Posted by: Ramaloke Dec 17 2010, 02:44 AM

This makes me wish Masters of Orion had a new game coming out.

Posted by: Karoline Dec 17 2010, 03:44 AM

Haven't played that in forever. I do recall it being an excellent game though.

Posted by: Ramaloke Dec 17 2010, 03:59 AM

In Master's of Orion II you could negotiate lots of treaties and if you had the upper hand you could even demand they give you planets. I enjoyed stomping all over the enemy AI and eventually whittling it down to 1 planet in 1 solar system under it's control.

Master's of Orion and Master's of Orion II are some of the best RTS games ever made IMO.

Plus when you research a stellar converter (IIRC) you could blow up an enemy planet after you were done destroying their cities. Very Deathstar-ish.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Dec 17 2010, 01:44 PM

But if you build Metal Gear, won't you be repeatedly defeated by a special forces agent with a peculiar affinity for cardboard boxes?

~J

Posted by: Warlordtheft Dec 17 2010, 02:33 PM

Try Galactic CIV II, it is just as good. The AI is pretty decent and will give you a challenge.

Side note: MOOIII killed the Master's of Orion franchise cause they tried to do too much with it.

Posted by: StealthSigma Dec 17 2010, 03:23 PM

This is why I will have all my guards kick, hard, any cardboard boxes that aren't neatly stacked in an appropriate location.

Posted by: Doc Chase Dec 17 2010, 04:35 PM

This makes me wish Masters of Orion had a new, good game coming out.

Let us not forget MoO3.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Dec 17 2010, 10:01 PM

I think it was Civ 4 where the American special unit was Navy SEAL? Someone should make a mod where the Japanese special unit is Snake. Snake automatically destroys Giant Death Robots garrisoned in cities you make him attack.