First Impressions

Its called street fighting it happened all the time in WW2.

After the air bombardments and tanks obliterated half the city? You know, like lowering its hitpoints :p
 
I'd appreciate if the infantry had a use aside from making a wall between the enemy and the siege
units.
 
Its called street fighting it happened all the time in WW2.

Yeah, tactically. Even then they still relied heavily on artillery pounding the place in before moving in.

e: build more infantry, get them into formations, get some tanks.
 
I haven't noticed that yet, but at one point my capital actually changed the luxury they wanted without me giving them the previous one (I'm fairly sure about that. I sold my luxuries for cash and didn't get enough influence to ally a city state). That didn't happen in Vanilla.

The mechanic might be that your cities simply demand a random lux that you don't have. In my current game on a Tiny Islands map both of my cities (early days here) demanded Gold. Scouting had revealed another tiny island with Gold, Stone, Crab, Fish and horses four tiles away from my capitol. Care to guess where I dropped city #3? :mischief:
 
Build infantry wall use siege, repeat thats what I end up doing now.
My ranged units do all the killing now.
 
Well, I can't say for certain on that given that I just started on my own continent, but that didn't stop runaway Austria from getting fed up with my espionage/denouncement/dunsettleus/dunspyus combo and declaring war. So far I've been able to manage her petty invasions, but there comes a point where I'll be facing mech infs and nukes.

I just don't like that at all.

e: Austrian Keshiks and Minutemen. On a map without America or Mongolia.

e2: Ironclads are melee ships now. Melee ships apparently can run over embarked units, but they lose all movement points after that. Also AI will now bombard your embarked stuff (lose an artillery to Austrian Gatling Gun that way)

Militaristic CS's will give you UU's. I got a conquistador the other day while playing as Attila.
 
The WW1 bombers have a lot of limitations, but they make late-game siege breaking MUCH easier (the bombers are really cheap to buy ''en masse'')
 
My first impression of the game is pretty impressive:

I took Egypt, Emperor, Continents, Standard Map.

Took most of the new civs as opponents, namely: Netherlands, Huns, Celts, Ethiopia, Carthage, Byzantines.

The Byzantines were jolly good fun as neighbors simply because Theodora seems to be an elegant and beautiful leader. Hey, I know this is a video game but she was much more pleasant to listen to than Dido who sounded annoying (no offense to all you Phoenician speakers out there). Plus she acts almost like a former prostitute-come-empress would behave.

Ethiopia is hands down the biggest dick in the game. Won't trade anything with me and is constantly starting coups in my allied city states. Predictably the Dutch and Attila are the two most powerful civs in the game, although Attila is a good buddy and pretty much trades luxuries straight up all the time.

I really liked the Religion mechanic, although I've reached a point where I have more faith than I know what to do with and I have like 4 Great Prophets twiddling their thumbs. I send them out to spread religion far and wide, but it just seems like busy-work. I chose the +food religion perks as often as possible and they've done a great job. Taking Islam, I went with the +30% religion spread but in hindsight I think I should have taken a "use faith to buy XXXX" perk. This might be better from a simply gameplay time saver as I am getting sick and tired of spawning Great prophets even after almost every civ capital has a not small denomination of Islam at this point.

I love, love, love the new wonders playing with Egypt. The Petra one in particular can make coastal desert cities quite formidable. The leaning tower of Pisa is also great, although I'm not sure which Great Person is now the best one to take. The Great Scientist is good, although kinda "meh" as opposed to Great Engineers -> Manufactory route that I prefer. Combat is great because it favors us "turtle-builder" civs and early rushes can be turned back by focusing of their siege train because swordsmen/pikemen are pretty weak against walled-cities.

As many have stated, I like the new city-state system because it really does feel like each CS has its own personality rather than the old "insert-gold-to-get-XXXX benefit" feel. Austria was not in this game, so I have yet to experience the late-game Austrian armada.

Espionage is pretty cool and I really hope the Devs completely ignore the numerous requests to make it more of a "unit-based-spy-walking-around-setting-off -suitcase-nukes" gameplay. I've got enough busy work with the Great Prophets thank you very much people. Let me have my classy menu-based counter-intel-constabulatory police state. Nothing more satisfying than executing foreign spies for espionage. Its a great way to increase spy-experience and pretty soon you have 2-3 super-agents ready to dabble in global CS politics. Espionage is NOT about setting off nukes in enemy cities. Go play Starcraft if you want that.

Commerce is now my favorite SP path, although true-power-gamers probably will still argue otherwise. Even though happiness is really easy to get, with me taking all the +food +growth religious perks, I really was not swimming in smiley faces until mid-late game due to my continent only having relatively few luxuries. The +25% extra cash from Commerce starter is VERY helpful at the point of the game it becomes available. But what is REALLY cool about the Commerce tree is that the Great Admiral becomes unlocked way before any civ can research Astronomy so I can develop trade contacts in rival continents well before my neighbors can. In MP games this admiral is very vulnerable doing so, but so long as you end your turn on ocean squares in the "New World" you can effectively map the other part of the world very effectively. Furthermore, with my game I have oodles of Faith so being able to purchase Great Merchants and doing trade missions fairly regularly means I have tonnes of gold late game.

All in all, it feels like I am playing a whole new game which IMO is what expansion packs should be all about. Thanks Firaxis and the whole Dev Team! Best $25 I've ever spent!
 
The mechanic might be that your cities simply demand a random lux that you don't have. In my current game on a Tiny Islands map both of my cities (early days here) demanded Gold. Scouting had revealed another tiny island with Gold, Stone, Crab, Fish and horses four tiles away from my capitol. Care to guess where I dropped city #3? :mischief:

Yes, but my point is that it was changed. In Vanilla a city would request a luxury and never changed that until it either got it or the end of time, whichever came earlier. It looks like in G&K, these kind of requests have a limited life span, just like most of the city state quests do, so you don't get stuck with something you can't do anything about.
 
Absolutely amazed with the expansion, the game is even more fun now and certainly has a much more "epic" feeling to it.

I would write more, but I'd rather be playing and working on my Earth map again. :)
 
Look, its bad enough that she bought off all the CSes in my game and turned them into production cities. Its even worse that she got pissed off at me that she DOWed 300 years ago. Its a nightmare that she's already in Atomics just as I got to my first Great War Infantry.

I was playing her on King and I was like 600 or so victory points above the closest AI. It was dumb. She just snowballs for so cheap and when she snowballs she removes the chance for other people to catch up by eating away the city-states. It's like playing Genghis Khan but you get all you conquests without having to lift a finger.

I wonder how they will nerf her? At least most of her advantages are not available in the early game, so you can just wipe her out at the beginning if you see her nearby. I'd rather face a rival like that than greece or Attila.
 
Yes, but my point is that it was changed. In Vanilla a city would request a luxury and never changed that until it either got it or the end of time, whichever came earlier. It looks like in G&K, these kind of requests have a limited life span, just like most of the city state quests do, so you don't get stuck with something you can't do anything about.

Whoops, misunderstood (Worked most of the night). In further developments, I have Gold within the cultural boundaries of my third city, it has a mine, and I have a trade route to my first and second cities. The Gold is listed in my Lux resources so I know that I have it.
My first and second cities are still demanding Gold. :confused:
 
If these first impressions are a good indication of how the expansion is executed, then I most certainly hope Ed Beach stays around for a while. To quote a certain popular gaming exec, "my body is ready" for a future CiVI under his guiding hand.

You should put this in your sig. However, keep in mind that Shafer was a hero after BTS and a goat after ciV came out. I'm confident that Sid will figure out a way to dumb down ciVI for us and blame it on Ed, at least the vanilla version, and we'll all sit around complaining about the "good old days of Gods + Kings".
 
Started a small continents plus game with the Mayans last night. I found plenty of sea resources so I took the God of the Sea belief. Settled my 2nd city at around turn 50 since a barb camp was in the exact same spot I was planning on settling and I only had a damaged spearman to take it out. Sold some horses to Dido and bought a trireme instead of an atlatalist because I thought I could find enough city-states to get enough gold for an atlatalist. So far it seems like a pretty good addition to vanilla CiV.
 
My basic first impressions. No culture bomb any more abut you can do the same thing the a great general to spawn a citadel. Great Artists are the only Great Person that can start an age. I like the new twist on naval warcraft. I had a pack of Frigates and caravels (later iron clads) that were able to claim cities much fast than land troops. The Great Wall does not become obsolete after dynamite, very annoying. I like the religion component, makes early decisions in cities a little trickier. I have beaten the game on Deity but I normally play Prince. I backed it down a couple of levels to get a feel of the game, a little more forgiving as you figure stuff out. I like the espionage though it is a negative if you are ahead of the game. The City State overhaul is nice, the quests are more valuable than just spamming with money. I haven't played any of the new civs yet but I did encounter the Myans, great addition! Not sure if it was because I played down a level or two but it seemed to me that the AI was very slow in building cities. Overall very pleased.
 
Hi all, long time lurker first time poster. Like many here I've been losing a lot of sleep with G&K over the past few days, so I'll share a couple thoughts:

Playing Celts, Continents, Prince, Epic.

Just got to spies, and while I agree they don't have as much variety as we might have hoped, I'm really enjoying the way they work. The Civs on my continent are spaced out, so everyone is friendly due to no border conflicts. Iroquois want my land, and Polynesia isn't happy about me building so many cities, but no other negative modifiers for me.

Then we hit the Renaissance and Spain comes running: Hiawatha is planning to attack. I'm not surprised, I do have a nice city in the center of the continent parked next to the Grand Mesa that holds all of the banana along with some horse and iron, plus the bulk of my army is overseas intimidating and attacking some city states. But things get interesting on the next turn. My spy reports Kamehameha is mobilizing to attack me! Sure enough, I check the diplo screen and both nations are now neutral, want my land, and think I'm a menace. There is no doubt they have teamed up against me.

Now in a regular game, I would have been caught with my pants down. With the heads up from espionage, I quickly make some defensive pacts, buy some more units and call my army back. After this is done, a few turns later, Poly has swung back to friendly. Later still, the same happens to Iroquois. I think me prepping for an attack made the AI reconsider and then cancel it altogether. The spies didn't just help me ready for war, they helped prevent it entirely. Pretty cool stuff.

A few other observations:

-- If a city-state is angry with you, it seems they can't be bullied. I had warred with one city state and then made peace, but even with my entire army parked in their territory the game said they weren't afraid and would reject demands. Then I randomly fulfilled one of their quests, improving their modified from -50 to -20. Their screen then listed them as "Afraid" and I was able to bully them.

-- Civs finally offering to continue trades has me over the moon. I absolutely hated this about vanilla. It was infuriating to lose open borders and be kicked out of an ally's land in the middle of a war where I'm defending them. A major flaw from vanilla that I'm glad to see fixed.

-- Like others have mentioned, if you're going to get deep into the religion game, be sure to pick at least one modifier that lets you buy things with faith. After the spreading phase is over, you'll start raking in faith points and will need stuff to spend it on. I've got Pagodas in every city and have built my entire army out of Holy Warriors.
 
You should put this in your sig. However, keep in mind that Shafer was a hero after BTS and a goat after ciV came out. I'm confident that Sid will figure out a way to dumb down ciVI for us and blame it on Ed, at least the vanilla version, and we'll all sit around complaining about the "good old days of Gods + Kings".

The quote from building The Porcelain Tower comes to mind. "Things always seem fairer when we look back on them..."
 
I really do not see why people have an issue with happiness the way it is!! I have always hated in CiV 5 that I have to limit my cities!! Right now I do not have to, and should not have too!! i know I will keep game offline until i see real good patch notes!! :) I am going to have to assume most people do not build to see how high they can get their population, this has always been a very fun part for me, and one of the mjor reason I hated 5 so much when it came out.

Seriously, you should check out SimCity 4 (with SimCity 5 coming next February). There you can build as huge of a metropolis as you desire without any mean bad guys attacking you. I've seen some very impressive cities built in SimCity.
 
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