First Impressions

I hopet his wont be a pointless thread, as far as I see there ain't any threads that are generally about God and Kings "impression"

But I gotta admit, bravo, the game is so much fun with the new stuff.

From religion, to espionage, i've noticed small changes that I was VERY pleased about.

- City States now have a bigger role in the game, especially in diplomacy involving "Protection", you now have some opportunity cost, Do you sacrifice your relationship with your City State? Or your rival?
- Game felt rather difficult in the beginning even on Warlord, which was pleasant, it was more tense rather than "hard" but very fun, Dido, I already hate her, I think Dido and Monty are desitned to be for each other , not to mention she REFUSED to give up even after I defend myself from her (she still wanted ALL of my cities, eventually she gave up)
- The race for religion is actually BIGGEr and TOUGHER than I imagined, I was the second one to found a religion, mostly because I got beat to Stonehenge, which was rather disappointing, but I picked a Quarry based Pantheon, and eventually founded Judaism as Liz. So yay for that
- The new Diplomatic Victory is amazing (it's a small change) no longer will everyone vote for themselves, what I find most funny is how it CORRECTLY identified my vote for Gustavus, who was my only true ally.
- The diplomacy overall IS diffrent, tehre is no longer pernament hate, after I got attacked by Ethiophia, Netherlands, Austria and Byzantium, the other nations of Maya also denounced me, but after a while they warmed up to me and I managed to get a DoF from Maya AND Byzantium.
- Espionage is alright, shame it's rather limited, but it came useful as I somehow managed to lag behind my neighbor Carthage, so the Tech Stealing came in VERY useful.
- The new Tech Tree is amazing, Platics and the Penicilin techs FINALLY aren't more or less exclusive to Diplomatic Victory in my games.

The only sad thigns is those turn times, which I hope will get fixed, that and the weird things, like Pacal's missing feathers, which I hope is not by design, there's no reason why they can't add them if you have settings at Medium. I'm also noticing lack of notifications when a civilization is conquered (and CS).

Overall, GaK is so worth it

Moderator Action: Merged this as requested.

Really? How odd. Steve Jobs is an ok pick though. Popular vote.

I wish the new luxury resources had some bonus associated with them, i.e. Citrus allows certain units to heal faster, etc. So far it looks like Marble is the only resource with any kind of bonus (though Wine and Incense are useful for monasteries, I suppose).

after my second game of G&K - and actually my first game of ciV since nearly it's release, when I found it sorely lacking and went back to cIV - I must say, I'm warming to G&K. Not quite bts/rom/and but worlds better than vanilla 5

my 2 main questions:

.) is REX/ICSing still unstoppable? (as it was at least in early 5; it might have gotten nerved before G&K, I haven't played vanilla since its release...)
from what I gather, the main anti-ics mechanic, namely happiness, seems to have been relaxed, so it should work even better now?

.) I played as Austria (and agree with comments of its UA being maybe overpowered), yet for most of the game did NOT marry any CSes. My gut-feeling was that in the long-term, food/culture bonuses in ALL my cities would be more beneficial than acquiring a single new (even if fully upgraded) city. Can anyone shed some insight into whether this could be true or whether marrying ASAP would always be the preferred option?
(BTW: I DID use a nice exploit: after profiting from said boni for the whole game, I married all 8 remaining CSes in the last turn before my cultural victory, changing the final score rather significantly )

rex is a bit slower now, just due to collective rule getting moved. But there does seem to be more happiness available so that helps.

First game finished (as Austria) to get an impression:
- I like the way the AI behaves now diplomatically much better than before. I played the whole game through with only one war early on (I made a DoF with my neighbour Dido and she asked me to join in against Elizabeth), and did not get backstabbed by my friends
Looking back on some reactions of the AI I guess having an adequate army up is the best thing to have, if you want peace.
- The AI can handle some units (what little I saw of war) well. I have to see what it will do in a modern war.
- The Austrian UA is pretty good, but it is a financial problem at first. Given the number of cities one needs to win, and the advantages of being smaller, its not as fearsome as one might think. It is awesome if one wants to have a sprawling empire
- Espionage is of interest, if you are behind the others in tech. As long as you are ahead, it is more of a liability.
- Religion is pretty good, and the late-game option of buying great people with faith is useful.

I have to see how a real war looks like next

So, the +'s:
-Better AI (diplomacy and war)
-Variety of city-states and their missions, not so gold-dependent
-Religion (just having it)
-Espionage (just having it)
-Having options to turn on/off quick moves/combat in-game! (probably the best addition and you don't even have to get the expansion for it!)

-'s:
-Buggy, for some reason my espionage button doesn't work after a certain point in the rennaissance (click on it, nothing happens), perhaps it will go away if I reload a save. Also, "End turn" is laggy, takes a second or two for it too realize there's moves I still have to decide on ("Unit requires orders"). Lastly, during one play, I had a "City wants [resource]" notification icon that wouldn't dismiss, it did dissapear after reloading a save.
-Espionage missions, where's "support city revolt"?
-Religion, too many frickin' beliefs!

Bottom-line: 5/10; interesting but still not as good as Civ4, perhaps the 2nd expansion will be the sweet spot?

Perhaps I'm just a Civvie that's becomes set in his ways and I just need to explore more. On the other hand, I honestly feel like there were part of Civ4's espionage/religion system that should have been included.

cheesy diplomatic victory still possible

First game as Celts, Prince (Normally play Emporer), continents.

Interesting so far, what looked like a good starting position - 2 silver + 1 gold on nearby hills, moved settler next to a river position to get a riverside gems hill in range as well..

Proved to be on the bottom end of the continent, with the Byzantines just north. Was going to try rushing them, but got distracted by wonder building and religion.

When I did attack with a couple of my UU, 2 catapults and a swordsman my catapults got destroyed quick. Took the citie(s) in the end (now have founding cities of 2 religions).

Lost a few units though, city attack strength buffed a lot? One catapult only got 1 shot off before being destroyed in 2 hits.

BigChiefLizzy said:

Lost a few units though, city attack strength buffed a lot? One catapult only got 1 shot off before being destroyed in 2 hits.

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Cities are better at hitting things. Being on a hill, having walls, having oligarchy, and advancing an era all make things really difficult on the attacker. Combining them is super effective. Trying to attack a city when the owner has cracked just 1 Medieval Tech and invested even slightly in defense is a losing proposition for most Catapults and Swordsmen. You're stuck waiting until you unlock Physics and upgrade to Trebs, XP'ing your Catapults into the Cover I promotion, or picking a softer city target - like something small with no walls on a plains.

My first time in Gods and Kings trying to dislodge the Inca in the early Medieval period was impossible. They had Tradition, Hill, Walls, and a Composite Bowman with no supporting troops. I think the jerk nearly Bee-lined Guilds for Machu Pichu or something and hit Medieval early. I had 3 Catapults, 3 Swordsmen, and 2 Composite Bowmen. Each turn the City + Bowman combined for 100HP damage on a unit. The first turn I moved Catapults into position one died. Next turn I hit twice. Then I was down to one catapult. I shot everything I had into the city, and attacked with all 3 swordsmen. Next turn he healed back into the yellow and killed two of my Swordsmen. On my next turn I ran the math and saw that even if I went all-in against the city I couldn't take it.

Now I know how those poor AI Civs feel when they lose their 7-8 unit armies in a pointless meat-grinder bid against one of my cities.

- Marty Lund

Finished my first game (Sci Loss @ King w/ Standard Continents as Maya with all the new Civs and Egypt) Thursday night, and started #2. I'm not good at this game, since I stopped playing right after the expansion was announced (less to unlearn, I figured), but here's what jumped out at my sleep deprived self.

1. Stele make Ethiopia the dominant early religion civ. At first I thought that it was because I rolled the Celts in the Classical era. However, on game 2 (Prince, Small, Ice Age, Wide Continents, low sea, cold, low rain) as Ethiopia, without trying I am waaay ahead on religion.

2. The first choice civics choice of Lib/Honor/Trad actually appears to matter. What is best? I was hoping y'all could figure it out.

3. Both I and the AI seem to be controlled primarily through staring location. Forget Austria being OP, on my map they were the only other Civ eliminated (by Egypt of all people). If MariaT is awesome I didn't see it. She was always snooty with me, despite the fact we were never near each other. If I wasn't on a subcontinent landlocked between three Civs and at least half my tiles were jungle or desert (thank you for the river, BTW, I totally needed that), I think I would have won despite my poor play (read more, move stuff less, FLP).

4. Much easier to turtle. Cities are invincible without either siege weapons or significant (I'm talking two era) tech supremacy. All of the trees/jungles/hills are murder on line of sight for siege works. Attilla was on the other side of the globe, but I bet those rams woulda been pretty OP on my map.

5. Combat AI is improved, but I noticed it more in the water than on land. Every siege I see tons of AI focus-firing units. EX. Sweden liberated a city state from me using two actual carrier groups. Never saw the like in vanilla. On the other hand, I managed to hold off the Egyptians in my one isolated city on their subcontinent despite their tech lead for 90 turns with no reinforcements. And half of those were with the city attack alone after I got my lvl3 Gatling gun out of there. How? By leaving the cavalry units alive around the city and focusing on their cannons/artillery/rocket artillery. On the other hand, I'll give Ramses credit, he even tried amphibious landings. He just had a hard time getting around all those machine guns he had lying around about 3 hexes out.

That's probably why the AI does better on the water, and why folks gripe about the combat AI at high levels, it still has problems moving those units around in crowds. I can't talk, I have the same issue.

6. City-State play needs help. While it is good you, or more accurately Maria T, can not longer expect to buy out city states, it seems impossible to hold them as Allies for any amount of time (possibly unless you liberate them, but I just liberated my first one last night). Early in the game, quests tend to reward dominant/runaway civs who can pick them up without trying often. Post-Renaissance, everyone tends to place their spies in city-states because they are on the whole safer there than in the runaway civ's capital and because you can ignore quest since it is frankly a lot easier to rig elections than win quests for three-five important CS.

7. Happiness is a lot easier if you focus on it via Religion and win the races. Game one, I didn't. When you pretty much have to rely on Happiness for GAs, you do kinda need to run a lot higher happiness than you did in vanilla (can't tell you how many of my GAs came from GPs while I had negative happiness). That one change I think will be the biggest for strategy purposes. No one's mentioned it yet, but this has got to be a huge nerf to China (because what are you going to do with all those GGs?), and ought to make Persia practically impossible to play at high levels for us mere mortals.

8. Looking at the Steam statistics, Firaxis has to be over the moon. It looks like G&K is out selling all the previous DLC from the percentage of folks who have gotten achievements, and it's only been out in Europe a day?

About 100 turns into a Byzantium game, Emperor, small Small Continents, standard
1. Happiness levels are way too high
2. Beliefs were hard to make, esp. since I get a 2nd one - lots of good choices
3. Glad I turned off espionage
4. Maybe my imagination but everything seems to be growing/expanding/progressing slower
4a. Founded the first Religion in the game at turn 73
5. Combat changes are making promotions that much more critical (which I love)
6. Performance has been fine, even without changing the ini file
7. Still trying to get a handle on religion spread; probably needed to have chosen some beliefs that gives bonuses to that
8. Promoted dromons are better than catapults
9. Got Stonehenge pretty easily; GL was built by the AI at turn 62

First Impression:

Civ doesn't get any better than sending a Prophet to Pharaoh's Court.

I actually got beat to my Stonehenge in my first game as Elizabeth.. probably mostly because I put myself up against all the 9 new civs :| xD.

I think I had 2 or 1 turn before I had it.

is diplomacy on higher difficulties actually easier?
in my first game (earth map/small size/prince) i had several DOWs, several civs not liking me when first meeting me and generally a hard time forming/keeping relations (I NEVER backstabbed, NEVER DOW'D and played generally nice guy).

in my current earth map/standard size/emporer game, everyone likes me - and in fact they all like each other as well (apart from the poor celts, hated by/hating everyone. but even they like me - and others don't even seem to care much that I have research agreements and other deals with the celts). everyone's got a different religion - and still: no DOW'ing (except celts), no backstabbing, no techstealing... a peacful builders' dream

WTF?

if this keeps up, I'm looking forward to immortal & deity

What's "pressure"? You see it when it tells you how many followers of religions there are in a city, but I have no idea of what it is or what it effects.

I'm also kind of struggling to fully understand the new mechanic of how to be allies/friends with city states. For example I gave 1000 gold to Jakarta and the bar was full, so I thought I'd be allies. But the Celts were still their allies. then I fullfilled 2 quests later in the game in fairly quick succession, but still the Celts were their allies. What are the main factors for a city state determining who their ally is? Btw I also spread my religion to Jakarta with a great prophet, which was one of the quests.

I like the espionage, I know some people dislike it. So far in the 2 games I've been in I've had the tech lead and so haven't been able to steal any tech. I just tend to stick spies in my own cities, and certainly always keep one in my capital or largest potential city. Works pretty effectively. In my first game I kept a spy in Amsterdam and Rotterdam each, and they were both 5 star potential cities and I managed to only lose 2 techs the whole game.

Edit: Also one more question. Does stationing an inquisitor in a city prevent a rival great prophet/missionary from spreading their religion to that city? I'm kind of confused about it's ability. I know it removes all enemy religions from a city, but doesn't using a missionary do the same thing? But missionaries covert all followers to your religion right? I'm just not sure about the faith units abilities in general, would really love a some up if someone could provide it thanks.

OK, my turn now . So I finally got the game after spending 11 hours downloading it from Steam (my Internet connection got speed-limited the night before.....don't ask ).

So decided to try my first game with a totally random Civ, & got America (a Civ I usually don't take). Straight away I'm *loving* the new Diplomacy System-much more rational than it was before (Attila hates me, Theodora loves me (nudge, nudge; wink, wink ) & William & Gandhi are still neutral towards me), & in particular in its application to City States. I'm also *loving* the new faith system (managed to get a pantheon thanks to a shrine & Stonehenge-& am now creating Culture like a *boss* thanks to my Oral Tradition). Religion definitely has way more flavor than it did in Civ4! The AI as a whole is much improved, though the barbarian AI still feels a little lackluster. I also agree with some people here, though, that I feel some additional diplomatic options might have been nice-most particularly the ability to warn other Civs off of allying with City-States you're already friends with (and/or pledged to protect) and the ability to form trade routes with Major Civs & City-States would be good additions . Oh, I'm also loving the revamped Social Policies. Even though the changes are relatively minor, I definitely feel that they make early game decision making much more involved (Liberty vs Tradition especially no longer feels like an easy choice-which is a *good* thing). So overall, in spite of some *very* minor qualms, I definitely think this is a *very* solid expansion so far (I'm even planning a pre-emptive war against the Huns, which is the kind of thing I've *never* done in Civ5 before now....but I simply can't stand by & let him bully a City-State I've pledged to protect ;-) ). I also know when an expansion hits the spot when I play for almost 2 hours longer than I'd originally intended, which hasn't happened to me since BtS came out .

Aussie.

Aussie, nice work. I am finding it's harder to choose the first set of policies unlike before, so that can only be a good thing. For situational reasons, I ended taking a little bit from each of the first three. Probably not optimal but it wasn't a good time to get some of the deeper ones in each.

smallfish said:

cheesy diplomatic victory still possible

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If there's a runaway civ in my game just hand me the cheese, brother.

Buccaneer said:

Aussie, nice work. I am finding it's harder to choose the first set of policies unlike before, so that can only be a good thing. For situational reasons, I ended taking a little bit from each of the first three. Probably not optimal but it wasn't a good time to get some of the deeper ones in each.

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Something similar happened with me. I went down the Liberty path for the sake of Roleplaying, but found myself taking honor over tradition due to an abundance of barbs & the presence of Attila . Similarly, when I hit the Middle Ages I'll focus on Patronage, due to the abundance of City-States in my vicinity.. Speaking of situation based decisions, its another thing I'm loving about religion. I really had to agonize over my choice of Pantheon, as several were potentially useful. This also highlights the improved AI, as Attila & Theodora have chosen pantheons ideal for their locations/situation. Which reminds me, the AI is kicking my @$$ on Prince in the tech area, though I'm owning them in regards to Wonder Construction ;-).

Aussie.

GAGA Extrem said:

I must admit after a few tries I feel that religion is quite *meh*.

It requires significant early game investments, but unless you play a religion oriented CIV, the benefits become unimportant quite quickly.
It is really nice that you can customize your benefits, but at least for my playstile "ignore and play as usual" seems to work out much better...

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The more I've played, the more I'm coming to a similar conclusion. Religious benefits are good - particularly Holy Warriors - but I'm not having a lot of incentive to spread religion and don't seem to suffer unduly from not having it in most of my cities (unless they're strategically-placed - for instance Uxmal is closer to Hun territory than Palenque or Tikal, so it would be helpful to be able to faith-buy catapults there).

They're in there, but it seems only under certain conditions. I got way ahead in the religion game and spread it all over my continent. Nobody really seemed to mind, but Spain really took to it. I got the "They have happily accepted your religion and spread it among their cities" positive modifier. And that seems to mean the AI is actually working to spread your religion on their own. I've watched as Spain worked to stamp out the competing religions of our neighbors, all in the name of the Celtic god. They took the political heat and I got all the benefits.

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Ran across the first religious modifier I've encountered - Spain not happy that I spread Shinto to one of their cities while they were trying to spread Buddhism.

Other 'second impressions' generally:

- Like the multiple quest options with CSes, but there seem to be too many quests once you've run across a few CSes, or the influence gain from completing them is too high. It seems whatever I do I please some random CS, and it feels I need to put much less effort into obtaining friends and allies, particularly early in the game. I'm also finding it less important to specialise by CS type (although with happiness so easy to come by generally, mercantile city-states don't appear to be much use) - I'm getting big boosts to culture and faith, enhanced growth in the capital, and occasional military units without actively playing a CS diplomacy game.

- The AI seems not to use denouncements much any more, so there's much more backstabbing (i.e. attacking without warning), as well as wars that serve no obvious purpose. In my current game, Spain and America declared war, appeared to do nothing, and then declared peace. The Huns, fresh out of war with Genghis Khan, decided that I would be their next target - even though I was on the other side of the continent - which gained them nothing since they lost a large army attacking Palenque without any obvious gain if they'd succeeded.

- The AI really struggles to play the Huns, who have turned up as AI opponents twice now. AI strategy tends not to favour attacking early enough to make use of these early-game units, and by the time it does attack in force said units are almost obsolete. It also seems to want to use battering rams like conventional melee units, trying to use them in defence and not prioritising city targets for them.