First Impressions

I've held up getting Civ V because the intense backlash against it.
Is it more like Civ IV now, which I really liked, or is it still deeply flawed?

I have to be honest, the game has been getting better-in drips & drabs-ever since early last year-largely thanks to player feedback & the brilliant mods of people like Thal (many of whose ideas got incorporated into subsequent patches). That said, G&K has transformed Civ5 into a game which I personally feel is as good-if not better-than my experiences with Civ4! Religion in particular works far better in Civ5 than in Civ4 now!

Aussie.
 
I have to be honest, the game has been getting better-in drips & drabs-ever since early last year-largely thanks to player feedback & the brilliant mods of people like Thal (many of whose ideas got incorporated into subsequent patches). That said, G&K has transformed Civ5 into a game which I personally feel is as good-if not better-than my experiences with Civ4! Religion in particular works far better in Civ5 than in Civ4 now!

Aussie.

Ok you sold it to me haha
 
I don't agree with you regarding number values. We had that in Civ4 & it was *way* too gamey. I wouldn't mind someone bringing out a Mod to bring this back, but I'm actually perfectly fine with their current approach of colour coding what factors are contributing to mood, & to what degree.

I do agree with you, however, that Foreign Advisors should be of greater assistance in the ways you mention :)!

Aussie.

I don't really want a number as a diplo modifier as in CiIV, just as a correlation of how your doing diplomatically. For instance, if a civ is hostile or guarded toward you, that could be on varying levels. Are they super hostile, or mad but they'll get over it. A number value could tell you how hostile or how guarded they are. Do u see what I am getting at?
 
I really like the introduction of spying. Being able to see what my main enemies are building allows me to better adjust my wonder build times so I dont end up being 1-2 turns short and resort to cheesy loading of a old save file.

Some of the old civs work a lot better in the expansion. England for example completely dominates water maps and that extra spy gets you a headsup on techstealing (or counter in case your in the lead).

Also spying has some intersting tactics to it. I was playing as the Celts and got into a prolonged war with germany and then after a slight diplomatic incident sweden went all hostile on me. My spies managed to uncover a german plot to invade a swedish city and I went on to tell the swedes about this. Due to this their attitude me changed to friendly and they joined me in the war against germany and I managed to get my towns back and rebuild my army. That was really enjoyable.
 
OK, got my first taste of G&K combat, by getting in a relatively short war with Attila. It was *really* brutal, with both sides taking heavy casualties, & neither side having a distinct advantage (Except I had a catapult to help take his city). I captured his city, then he came along & captured it right back. He then proceeded to mop up any units I'd failed to retreat from the area. Then, having beaten me back, he very kindly offered me a peace treaty. The interesting thing is that, in the 600 years since, he has gone from being Hostile to being Friendly-due largely to the influence of my religion on his empire ;). Meanwhile, Gandhi has gone from being Neutral to being Guarded (ungrateful little sod, I'm the one who took the pressure off him by declaring on Attila). However, that is principally due to me settling on the spot where one of his cities used to be (before Attila razed it to the ground ;)). Seriously, I am *so* loving this game!

Aussie.
 
I don't really want a number as a diplo modifier as in CiIV, just as a correlation of how your doing diplomatically. For instance, if a civ is hostile or guarded toward you, that could be on varying levels. Are they super hostile, or mad but they'll get over it. A number value could tell you how hostile or how guarded they are. Do u see what I am getting at?

Well that's why I want more gradation in attitudes-from Neutral to Guarded to Hostile then to Hatred on one side; & from Neutral, to Kindly to Friendly to Ecstatic on the other. However, depending on your military strength, this can change to Afraid, Terrified, Respectful or Awed (if you're clearly stronger than them), or to Disdain, Contempt, Pity or Protective (if you're weaker than them).

Aussie.
 
Oh, the only thing that has *really* bugged me so far is that the Library isn't a Specialist Building :(.

Aussie.
 
This is a bit off topic, but somewhat related. I've noticed allied CS units being more aggressive than before. Now when I'm at war with someone, they actually send out units to attack enemies outside their borders (to a degree, they're not going cross country), and not just ranged units, melee units too.

Curiously I've had exactly the reverse experience. In my typical pre-G&K games, CSes would actively sortie out on your behalf, and would occasionally take cities. I had one fun game where everyone had CS allies and they ended up taking more of my cities than any of the major civs. I've missed that so far in G&K - I was surprised even to see Yerevan attack Hun units immediately outside their borders.
 
I'm certainly enjoying the game more than vanilla, which is good because I couldn't even stand vanilla, I could only enjoy playing it if I was using Thal's VEM, and even then I still went back to Civ 4 on occasion. Here's my impression so far after several games (I've yet to finish one however).

New Civs:
Austria - I don't personally find her that powerful, in fact I find her rather mediocre. Her UB and UU both come very late (late renaissance and early industrial) and her UA either requires saving up a lot of gold in order to nab a city state in short order so the influence doesn't drain or someone steals alliance from you (note that due to what personally feels like a reduced gold income across the board and gold being far less powerful at influencing CS this isn't as easy as it sounds), or luck on CS placement. I had an isolated start with her surrounded by citystates, and it took me quite some time, until around the renaissance-era to even make use of the ability. Not my kinda civ, but I don't mind her in my games.

The Netherlands - Really fun UA, changes early diplomacy and strategy by letting you rake in the gold from trading away your luxuries without taking much of a hit from the happiness loss. I used this to my advantage and purchased units and buildings to get ahead of the game. Also, when you go down the commerce policy tree, you can nab the +2 happiness from luxuries and it's like you're not even trading them, really cool. I never seem to start anywhere that can make use of polders though, which kinda sucks, they look strong for tall empires. As for Sea Beggars I've yet to use them, but I can see them being VERY strong if only because of the gold income they'll give.

Sweden - I don't see why you would ever want to use their UA, it seems borderline useless outside of getting rid of any GProphets or GGs you have lying around that you aren't using. The +% GP gen with a DOF doesn't make up for it. Due to the later Rifling tech their unique rifleman isn't really worth the wait just for a free march promotion, though I guess if you go to war at that point you'll be doing alright. I don't think I've ever trained a Lancer, so I don't know what to say about the replacement. Either way, probably my least favourite civ in the game, vanilla included.

Maya - Super strong UU and UB, their early game power is phenomenal with the swarms of cheap super archers and +2 faith +2 sci from their shrine. Their UA is pretty good but I don't know how to read the mayan calender so I can't predict when the next GP pick will happen. Guess it's something I'll learn eventually. So fun.

Ethiopia - Their UA is very strong, and simple to use. It just makes them really hard to invade and also lets them punish rapid expansion and get easy cities thanks to the combat bonus. The Stele is arguably the best way of getting faith that any other Civ has (except perhaps the Celts, but I haven't played them yet to test) and I generally build a monument at the beginning of the game anyway, outside of some starts. I didn't reach the era in my game with their unique Riflemen, but they seem incredibly powerful and just add to the turtle nature of the civ. Much fun.

The Huns - I haven't personally played them, but just want to ask anyone else if they've noticed that the huns sit on one city for a long time and never seem to take off. Is it just me? I even started next to an AI Attila, and he let me settle towards him and block him into his only city, and then he declared on me with some warriors and battering rams when I had horsemen and composite archers, so I just trashed him.

I haven't got enough experience on the other civs to comment so I'll move on...

Religion:
My favourite addition to the game from this expansion, even the AI changes don't make me happier than this. There's just so much choice, and it often makes my opening strategy different every game even if I'm the same Civ as last time I played. By the way, having the belief that gives you strength near your religious cities as Ethiopia? Impenetrable defenses!

Espionage:
Well, I've only gotten to Renaissance a few times, and the spies didn't do all that much. I think they could add more with it, though intruige is a fun mechanic. Meh.

Overall, I love this expansion, and I don't think I need Civ 4 anymore. :D
 
I'm certainly enjoying the game more than vanilla, which is good because I couldn't even stand vanilla, I could only enjoy playing it if I was using Thal's VEM, and even then I still went back to Civ 4 on occasion. Here's my impression so far after several games (I've yet to finish one however).

New Civs:
Sweden - I don't see why you would ever want to use their UA, it seems borderline useless outside of getting rid of any GProphets or GGs you have lying around that you aren't using. The +% GP gen with a DOF doesn't make up for it.

That was my feeling too, but consider that there's little else to spend Faith on in the late game - with my own completed branches I can produce Great Engineers and Great Prophets at this point; prophets aren't useful at this game stage, and engineers aren't useful en masse. So if I were Sweden I could pop excess of these to secure diplomatic victory or favour late in the game - which is also the game stage where, I've discovered, CS bonuses appear to become most relevant (I could get by ignoring mercantile for most of the game, but I'm now at a point where I'm having difficulty with happiness without allying or befriending mercantile states).

Maya - Super strong UU and UB, their early game power is phenomenal with the swarms of cheap super archers and +2 faith +2 sci from their shrine. Their UA is pretty good but I don't know how to read the mayan calender so I can't predict when the next GP pick will happen. Guess it's something I'll learn eventually. So fun.

Scroll over the tooltip - it tells you what date it is in the rest of the world at the bottom. It's working for me; I've been the science leader for the entire game with slow expansion - even three or four early pyramids give a bonus that stacks up, when you consider that that alone is +6 science a turn. Last time the league table came up, I was the most literate civ with 40 techs - the second place civ had 34. And this is on Emperor (I also have interfaith dialogue, since by the time I chose a religion several others had been founded, but I don't know how big the science boost from that has been).

The Huns - I haven't personally played them, but just want to ask anyone else if they've noticed that the huns sit on one city for a long time and never seem to take off. Is it just me? I even started next to an AI Attila, and he let me settle towards him and block him into his only city, and then he declared on me with some warriors and battering rams when I had horsemen and composite archers, so I just trashed him.

They found cities, but the AI really struggles to use the Huns. It wants to use the battering ram well into the medieval period when it's long obsolete, it will deploy them defensively as though they were spearmen, and it plainly struggles for the lack of an early game melee unit better than the Warrior against enemy units. To play the Huns you really need to attack early because their units become obsolete very quickly, but the AI will always rush attack at a certain point in the game that's just that little bit too late - around the time everyone else has Iron Working or later, when they really need to be attacking as soon as they get The Wheel (and so maximise the advantage from their early Animal Husbandry - even unique horseless chariot archers are still just chariot archers at the end of the day, and are only dominating for a very short period of time). Add to that an appropriately bellicose AI personality, and you have a civ that wants to fight everyone but isn't very capable of holding its own when it does.
 
So I finally got G&K yesterday, 4 days after Americans and one day after most Europeans...

I'm halfway through my first game as Boudicca, King, Standard Arborea Continents, against all the other female leaders - partly as an excuse to see half of the new leader screens, partly because I wanted to see just how much of a beast Austria really is for myself, and mostly because I liked the idea of a global catfight :lol:

Thanks to the Celtic UA and being surrounded by forest, I got my pantheon up and running pretty quickly. Edinburgh had three sources of Deer and one of Ivory close by, so I went for Goddess of the Hunt, which was almost like a super-early mini Hanging Gardens, so that was good. I founded my religion first so got the pick of the beliefs.

I'm not sure I'll finish this game as I am getting my backside handed to me by the AI, which, if anything, seems more aggressive than it was in vanilla. My continent turned out to be vaguely cross-shaped, and given that I'm sharing it with Isabella, Elizabeth and Catherine, there isn't much room. Cathy and Liz are doing the war-fake friendly-war routine, and I'm miles behind in tech - it doesn't help that I basically went 'ooh shiny new tech tree' and didn't really pick a plan. You can't afford to do that on King, even less than before. Isabella loves me at least - although she did declare war on me the instant our first DoF was up, which was extremely irritating, we quickly patched things up, helped in no small part by my Missionaries shoving Celtic doctrine down her throat, and I'm now regularly signing RAs with her. Shame she's weak as hell and is probably going to get taken over by Liz unless I can do something about it.

By the time I found the other continent, Dido had gone, mostly thanks to Maria Theresa, who appears to be as much of a monster as I'd feared, at least in this game. As far as I can tell, there's only one City-State left on that continent which she hasn't married, and Theodora is fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it. Theodora and Wu aren't best of friends, but I've managed to sign DoFs with all three of them - so far, so good.

I like the new CS mechanics a lot. There was an interesting moment when Zanzibar, who I'd pledged to protect very early in the game, was attacked by Theodora, and I had to choose which one I would prefer to upset. I sided with Theodora and Zanzibar were none too pleased, but we weren't allied in any case and I soon got some influence back from a quest. The Happiness from allying with Mercantile CSs is ridiculous. I've only got the one ally, Marrakech, which is keeping my people cheerful enough for me to trade away all my other luxuries - desperately needed, as I'm finding gold a big problem. Happiness, Faith and Culture are all flowing in glorious quantities thanks to my beliefs, but I'm regretting not going more gold-focused as with the Mercantile CS Happiness isn't a problem anyway.

I've only dabbled with Espionage so far - managed to steal a tech from Russia - but given that I'm an era behind most of them, I doubt the game will last much longer unless I can somehow take a couple of cities from Liz...

So, yeah. So far I'm impressed with most of the changes, but I could have done with less aggressive AI.
 
It looks like they may have stick-saved CivV for the time being with G&K, congrats G&K developers.

That success only further highlights what a bad, bad idea 1UPT was for the Civ series. Now it is easier to build and support larger, more varied armies, and that means the appearance already in my present Carthage game (Emperor, continents, early Atomic Age now) of mini-blobs of doom trying to squeeze past the terrain and other civs units. I have a large containment army arrayed against the smaller and more backward Celts to my west, Boudicca snarling at me in her cage. Didn't want to wipe the Celts out to avoid the diplo hit. That's because the #1 civ, the Inca, lay directly to the south of me across a 5-6 hex width of land. Inca are ~200 points ahead of me (1200 to 1000), they are powerful but not runaway - yet.

That's because, 1) I nabbed Vienna (yay no Austrians;)), directly on my southern border, before the Inca did, when I saw they had opened up an attack and were already dinking the Austrian capital - receiving the diplo hit for wiping out the capital and the civ, which is why I didn't want more diplo hits - and 2) the Incas, who then declared war on the Celts - the games' hated dogpile civ - and whom had open borders to cross my land in a NW direction to get at then, was forced to squeeze single file past my units on the Celt border. This allowed Boudicca to pick off the superior Inca units one-by-one as they approached her city (rifles + city vs GW inf, MGs, cannon etc). The Incas never could mass a solid front to assault the city, thanks to the placement of my units - deliberate, of course, as I wanted both Celts and Inca to bleed, but certainly did not want the Inca to capture another city. As an experiment I moved some units out of the way to the north of the target city, and the Inca eventually found this 2 hex hole and pushed 4 units through in an assault from the NE. It looked like they had the Celts on the run, but then the Incas suddenly withdrew from this front.

Of course I had a lot of fun playing Rubic's Cube trying to move my own units around the swarm of Incas crossing my land to get at the Celts. Actually not - I just left them in place and let the AI play Rubic's Cube. The heck with that - if I wanted to play Rubic's Cube, I'd get a Rubic's Cube.

Instead, the Incas tried another approach from the south against another Celt city, moving through another 5-6 hex with of land, but this absent a mob of my own units, but partially occuppied with CSs, one of them conquered by the Incas (yeah, that'll make room). These two widths of land were separated by a medium sized inland sea located south center of the continent. I was the only one with cities (2) on the coast of that inland sea, shared with the Incas, meaning I could rake the Inca side of the sea with battleships produced from those ports. That's for the future.

One thing of note: The Carthaginian settlers pack a free harbor with them when they settle. I got free harbors in the cities on the inland sea. OK, but now get this: I also got instant trade routes with the capital, even though the capital was located on the opposite side of the continent, facing the ocean. There was no road connecting to the capital, nor was there any sea route possible as this was an inland sea. So the Carthaginian UA is not just getting a free harbor, but also getting an instant sea route no matter what, so long as you settle on a coast. Huge cost savings over the long run: no harbor build time/hammers, no coin maintenance, no need for roads, generally, so long as you are on a coast. Civ4 GL revivicus!

Note: if you are playing the CS ally angle, avoid defensive pacts! The AI loves to play this angle: make DP with you, then temporarily get a CS to switch allegiance from you to an AI civ already at war with the AI civ you've DPed with. The CS declares war on your DP partner, forcing you to auto declare war on the CS that was your firm ally just the turn before. As if that wasn't bad enough, here's the pissy kicker: you will also receive a diplo hit with the AI civ the CS temporarily allied with; they'll pop up on the screen and tell you so, condemning you for your "aggression" against their ally CS. It is not a small hit. It not only wastes all your efforts in making the CS an ally, but will waste all your efforts cultivating good relations with that AI civ as well.

So beware: DPs are implicit aggressions against CSes, and the AI loves flipping/whacking CSes!

On the plus side, I like now having the option to establish decent relations with a neighbor on your continent via spreading your religion to them, if you can. I did that in my first game as Byzantium, with fellow Greek Alex as my neighbor. In Vanilla that means Forever War if you can't snuff him out early, something more difficult in G&K. I did fight 2 massive wars with Alex up to Medieval, getting along like the Hatfields and McCoys, but eventually he calmed down, went Neutral and found better things to do, giving me some real breathing space. BTW, I had use for the Citadels for the first time, they are effective and likely made the difference between survival and defeat. I think nerfing GAs from GP save Artists was a very good move. Too many GGs, citadels situational? Save them for when the situation arises. Note also that citadels instantly develop any strategic resource upon which they are built. Conversely, I've taken to bagging the Louvre mid-late game for the 2 Artists, which are burned for 2 back to back GAs at a time when the extra coin is needed, especially for upgrades. The AI doesn't seem to prioritize this wonder, and that includes wonder hog Pachacuti. This works well with getting the Hermitage around the same time as the reqs are less onerous.

Finally, G&K succeeds apparently in busting up the whole no-brainer GS/RA tech blitz to Stealth. Thanks! However I plan to do Babylon in the next game just to see how far one can get with it.
 
I'm loving the new diplomacy setup. I've maintained a nearly 4000-year friendship with Germany despite us being 1-2 in the standings in nearly everything while Egypt.

In vanilla Civ V games, they for sure would have stabbed me in the back at some point (I've dropped to as low as 5th in military strength at some points while they've consistently been first).

The only Civ that consistently declares war on me is Babylon, who is next door and I'm in a religion battle with (that I'm dominating as the Mayans). Every single city on my continent (including their Holy City) is my religion, but they keep trying to convert my cities (and not their own, oddly enough) to their religion, then get pissed off when I use an inquisitor to banish their religion. :lol:

One thing I dislike is that, if you have a weak military and don't have strong ties to another civ that has a strong military, you'll get invaded (and run over). I liked the fact that I could hold a city w/ a single ranged unit in the vanilla game, but it's nearly impossible now. I've adapted by taking a Tradition/Honour policy tandem and using a garrisoned siege weapon with an archer beside the city. Babylon tried to zerg rush me w/ Pikemen and Composite Longbowmen (they have no iron) and they got stomped hard by my defense.
 
Is there additional religious icons mod out yet?
 
So I finally got G&K yesterday, 4 days after Americans and one day after most Europeans...

I'm halfway through my first game as Boudicca, King, Standard Arborea Continents, against all the other female leaders - partly as an excuse to see half of the new leader screens, partly because I wanted to see just how much of a beast Austria really is for myself, and mostly because I liked the idea of a global catfight :lol:

Thanks to the Celtic UA and being surrounded by forest, I got my pantheon up and running pretty quickly. Edinburgh had three sources of Deer and one of Ivory close by, so I went for Goddess of the Hunt, which was almost like a super-early mini Hanging Gardens, so that was good. I founded my religion first so got the pick of the beliefs.

I'm not sure I'll finish this game as I am getting my backside handed to me by the AI, which, if anything, seems more aggressive than it was in vanilla. My continent turned out to be vaguely cross-shaped, and given that I'm sharing it with Isabella, Elizabeth and Catherine, there isn't much room. Cathy and Liz are doing the war-fake friendly-war routine, and I'm miles behind in tech - it doesn't help that I basically went 'ooh shiny new tech tree' and didn't really pick a plan. You can't afford to do that on King, even less than before. Isabella loves me at least - although she did declare war on me the instant our first DoF was up, which was extremely irritating, we quickly patched things up, helped in no small part by my Missionaries shoving Celtic doctrine down her throat, and I'm now regularly signing RAs with her. Shame she's weak as hell and is probably going to get taken over by Liz unless I can do something about it.

By the time I found the other continent, Dido had gone, mostly thanks to Maria Theresa, who appears to be as much of a monster as I'd feared, at least in this game. As far as I can tell, there's only one City-State left on that continent which she hasn't married, and Theodora is fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it. Theodora and Wu aren't best of friends, but I've managed to sign DoFs with all three of them - so far, so good.

I like the new CS mechanics a lot. There was an interesting moment when Zanzibar, who I'd pledged to protect very early in the game, was attacked by Theodora, and I had to choose which one I would prefer to upset. I sided with Theodora and Zanzibar were none too pleased, but we weren't allied in any case and I soon got some influence back from a quest. The Happiness from allying with Mercantile CSs is ridiculous. I've only got the one ally, Marrakech, which is keeping my people cheerful enough for me to trade away all my other luxuries - desperately needed, as I'm finding gold a big problem. Happiness, Faith and Culture are all flowing in glorious quantities thanks to my beliefs, but I'm regretting not going more gold-focused as with the Mercantile CS Happiness isn't a problem anyway.

I've only dabbled with Espionage so far - managed to steal a tech from Russia - but given that I'm an era behind most of them, I doubt the game will last much longer unless I can somehow take a couple of cities from Liz...

So, yeah. So far I'm impressed with most of the changes, but I could have done with less aggressive AI.

Finished my first full game - lost to a surprise German science rush somehow, despite taking all the science Wonders, playing as Maya (with +2 science from each Pyramid) and having a religion with Interfaith Dialogue (which I didn't realise how to exploit to best effect until very late in the game, since I thought it worked on spreading religion to a city for the first time, and didn't realise that you got the bonus every time your missionary spread the world to a non-converted city). I've mentioned a few aspects of it before - but one thing I learned from playing the game all the way through is that things I neglected early (such as happiness and maintaining, rather than just obtaining, good relations with city-states; also I didn't abide by pledges to protect, which resulted in CSes distrusting me) came back to bite me - I was struggling with happiness in much of the late game, and losing Vatican City's favour (and open borders) cost me trade routes to most of my empire since my road had gone via that city...

Although plenty of individual diplomatic acts seemed odd, and Bismarck was positively schizophrenic going from hostile and denouncing to friendly within a couple of turns, there was definitely a sense of a coherent ongoing story seen overall. Relationships on my own continent were mostly stable and made sense; it took a lot of early-game effort to win over Genghis Khan, who remained suspiciously neutral even as I beat the Huns from his gate, but once I'd secured his friendship it lasted for the rest of the game and a number of shared war declarations; he happily adopted Mayan Shintoism, which may have contributed to our long relationship (despite some late-game tension that I favoured Order over his Autocracy).

I'd been friendly with Siam, and had joint-attacked America with them, an alliance which lasted right up until they objected to my efforts to spread Shintoism into their appropriately Buddhist realm, which seems a reasonable thing to object to from their perspective. I naturally took America's side in conflicts from then on; after I'd recalled them to life by retaking and liberating Washington they too remained permanent allies.

After establishing contact with the other civs I avoided any wars with the natives of the other continent, who were too busy pursuing their own long-running vendettas, but I kept my eyes on them and warned civs when I learned of plots against them, just to keep things interesting and everyone else occupied. A plot I uncovered against me from Boudica never came to anything. This, indeed, is my one complaint with the intrigue system - it seems that a lot of this info is 'planted' by the game just to give you something to bargain with, it doesn't actually reflect an AI civ's real intent towards another civ. I also miss being able to frame other civs, and it would be good if intrigue sharing was in the trade rather than Discuss section, so that you could share the info for a price.

Overall I love the espionage system - yes, it's light on features, and I'd rather tech-stealing was random. I've seen a lot of complaints about coups, but in this (Emperor) game I got few chances to pull them off since not many CSes had allies; the Germans failed three times in succession to incite a coup in Valetta, and one of my spies was killed in a coup attempt - and re-promoting a spy is a slow process. I don't see a need for them to be immediate rather than having a 'cooldown' like election rigging, and in both cases (for me election rigging tended to be more of an annoyance) I'd like the option to set your spy for counter-intelligence in an allied CS, but I didn't notice it being unbalancing. I dislike the way the National Intelligence Agency is tied to police stations, however - most of your cities will not be subject to espionage attempts, and so being required to build not just a largely useless police station, but also its prerequisite the constabulary, in every city is too much of a chore; it's a powerful effect, but I'd rather it was linked to the constabulary than the police station.

On my first two G&K attempts, the game didn't feel it added a lot - there were some improvements in diplomacy, but religion seemed not to have much effect with the beliefs I selected (other than faith-buying an army), but it felt like essentially the same gaming experience. I like vanilla Civ V, so that's fine, however playing the game all the way through not only adds new features and units as you go along, but the way you interact with religion and the city-state changes differs as well, making the whole seem quite distinct and an improvement on a strong base game.

I think some diplo modifiers are too strong, and some still have blanket effects - in particular, my first big war against Siam involved breaking a promise not to attack them when my units were close by. This not only remained a negative modifier with every civ in the game for the rest of the game - including civs who hate Siam such as Genghis and Washington - but appeared to be an equally strong modifier (based on its shading) with every civ and for the whole game. In general, from what I've seen so far, AI 'personality' differences in what they will and will not consider a negative or a positive, and in the duration of the effect, seem much reduced from the vanilla game.
 
I really LOVE Sea Beggars! I was playing the Netherlands on King level. I was next to Darius, who kept attacking me without success. However, it was annoying. After the third such attack, I got four Sea Beggars, and took out his second largest city without much trouble at all. It certainly was a lot easier than gathering a big army with a good distribution of units, and it put an end to Darius's warmongering. From then on he was more interested in being friends.
 
Well that's why I want more gradation in attitudes-from Neutral to Guarded to Hostile then to Hatred on one side; & from Neutral, to Kindly to Friendly to Ecstatic on the other. However, depending on your military strength, this can change to Afraid, Terrified, Respectful or Awed (if you're clearly stronger than them), or to Disdain, Contempt, Pity or Protective (if you're weaker than them).

Aussie.

That would work too. Just a way to tell how much or how little they like you or not. Maybe some better hints from your advisors would help you determine how you should deal with them. Of course, some advice should be wrong, or based on misinformation. These kind of things happened a lot, that is why rulers need to be skeptical of advice. Anyway things like this in place, would make the game more interesting. Especially from the diplomatic standpoint. I think the more the devs makes the human player feel more like they are making real decisions about their empire, the more fun it will be. :)
 
So after about 20 hours with the new expansion. I love it and thats with no mods. Standard map with sparse resources (Seem contol the little excessive happiness)

I am playing on immortal and Babylon is my civ, keeping up in tech thanks to the Babylon perk. I had many attacks from my neighbours Polynesia and Mongols, thank good for my Bowmen and my Babylonian walls. Overall the AI is better had to reload and prepare better a number of times as once you loose a city its very hard to take back if you units are injured from the battle.

I finally have seen the AI retreat on many occasions example when their trebuchet is destroyed and then ask for peace.

Diplomacy works better, it just feels better, not specific. Better peace and easier to trade. Love the way City States have lots of quests makes it a small sub game and keep you with things to do even ar peace.

Religion is good, not to powerful but still worth going for, love the missionary and inqusitors adds again another sub game.

Game pace at Epic is great even on Immortal / Standard, I did not do any crazy conquering.

Things just feels more polished overall, like the new units.

Overall I would give it 9/10 and thats from a civ player that started with the game Empire. Its fits my play style perfectly, not to aggressive and lots of building, but wars here and there and big wars once you get infantry+
 
I just captured Istanbul and the Ottomans had a few triremes off its coast. Imagine my surprise when one of them recaptured the city. That's awesome, I had forgotten about that.
 
I just captured Istanbul and the Ottomans had a few triremes off its coast. Imagine my surprise when one of them recaptured the city. That's awesome, I had forgotten about that.

Started my new game on Shuffle, which just happened to spawn an island map (with me in tundra at the south pole. :() so I'm looking forward to a perfect opportunity to watch how the AI plays naval games if any conflicts arise - especially since two of the civs I've encountered (Byzantium and Korea) have unique naval units.
 
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