Play Alpha Centauri.

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.

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

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.

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 ?

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?

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

dosbox?

For the record, X-COM > Civ 1.

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

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)

Together with Jagged Alliance 2, yes.

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.

*slap* "Elliot, you idiot!"

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.

*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?

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.

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.

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.

You don't have transport planes in Civ5?

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

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

QFT.

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

Cooler? Yes. Realistic? No.

Paratroopers have to regroup after being dropped in.

--



Waaah?

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