Are you really in favour of uniques ?

Happiness can come from coloseums, faith spending buildings, luxuries and some social policies.. Some civilizations don't add happiness as a unique.

Biologist said:

The solution to that is simple: take the plunge and start as a completely different civ. Pick Shoshone or France or Maya or whoever. If you can't figure out how to keep happiness up, come to forums and look up helpful threads, or start a new one. Try getting beliefs, or city state bonuses, or social policies to help combat the unhappiness. Every civ in the game is capable of producing an empire that doesn't constantly sink into unhappiness. Some need more luck than others to do this, but all of them can do it.

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I agree with this. I think uniques would be bad if they were completely imbalanced, but they aren't at all. There are a few civs that are a bit strong (Poland, cough, cough), but I think the civ designers did a really good job of balancing out each civ while making their uniques fun. Half the fun I have in this game comes from trying to roleplay out how I imagine each empire is, and I find that the uniques greatly help with allowing me to do that. I suppose I'm not going to play a peaceful Mongolia (though I believe Madjinn won a deity game with Mongolia using no UUs to prove its possible, so you are not required to use UUs), but why would I want to roleplay a peaceful mongolia? I feel like my uniques add to the immersion I feel in the civilization, and expand my roleplay options rather than limit them.

redwings1340 said:

I agree with this. I think uniques would be bad if they were completely imbalanced, but they aren't at all. There are a few civs that are a bit strong (Poland, cough, cough), but I think the civ designers did a really good job of balancing out each civ while making their uniques fun. Half the fun I have in this game comes from trying to roleplay out how I imagine each empire is, and I find that the uniques greatly help with allowing me to do that. I suppose I'm not going to play a peaceful Mongolia (though I believe Madjinn won a deity game with Mongolia using no UUs to prove its possible, so you are not required to use UUs), but why would I want to roleplay a peaceful mongolia? I feel like my uniques add to the immersion I feel in the civilization, and expand my roleplay options rather than limit them.

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In that context, you're not alone because i also don't get to use my unique units when I'm using a civilization. A good example of this is pangea random civilization because you can end up obtaining a sea civilization in pangea which makes it a complete waste of uniqueness since pangea is a land map and not a sea map. You can end up using keshiks in sea maps if you'remMongolia at sea but it wouldn't work becauseyou need naval units and not land units in sea maps.

But archipelago and Pangaea are only two of the possible map types. About all the others have a place for both sea units and land units.

FlorbFnarb said:

But archipelago and Pangaea are only two of the possible map types. About all the others have a place for both sea units and land units.

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Yeah but you wont have to always get to use your uniques in the map that youre on. So if youre unique with keshik and youre in archipelago you wouldnt get very far since theres not enough land to be mobile and get the keshiks moving. Keshiks can move in land but not in water.

reddishrecue said:

Yeah but you wont have to always get to use your uniques in the map that youre on. So if youre unique with keshik and youre in archipelago you wouldnt get very far since theres not enough land to be mobile and get the keshiks moving. Keshiks can move in land but not in water.

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Au contraire, mon frère, keshiks also move in water. Try it. Put one in water... you will find it will, in fact, move. Now if you're talking about a mountain, that will not move. An atoll? Won't move. Natural wonders: also won't move. But keshiks in water? Ah yes, keshiks in water do move, sonny boy.

Dr. D said:

Au contraire, mon frère, keshiks also move in water. Try it. Put one in water... you will find it will, in fact, move. Now if you're talking about a mountain, that will not move. An atoll? Won't move. Natural wonders: also won't move. But keshiks in water? Ah yes, keshiks in water do move, sonny boy.

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It is certainly a lot slower and more tedious to use Keshiks on naval maps (not to mention, you will most definitely want naval support and escort, if not a full-fledged navy), but it's still doable .

Maybe not so great if you're after those cities founded on 1-tile islands

Dr. D said:

Au contraire, mon frère, keshiks also move in water. Try it. Put one in water... you will find it will, in fact, move. Now if you're talking about a mountain, that will not move. An atoll? Won't move. Natural wonders: also won't move. But keshiks in water? Ah yes, keshiks in water do move, sonny boy.

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Yeah, you would need optics for that and plenty of land to land in or else your keshiks could really not be able to make it particularly in a map with very little land such as archipiélago.

Knight-Dragon said:

Isn't there an option to just turn off UAs and UUs?

This way, everyone will be happy...

How you want to play your game shld have no impact on how I want to play my game.

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Actually... yes, why not ? Having an option to turn uniques off would be cool.

But in the same time, devs should provide a range of civs (all existing past and present) with city names, CLSL, and possibly leaders (not fond of it as i would require way too much work for ALL civs, but as Civ always had them I wonder...), for everybody being able to recreate the history of its country.

Also, there should be an CLSL OFF option. (should be ON by default)

Biologist said:

The solution to that is simple: take the plunge and start as a completely different civ. Pick Shoshone or France or Maya or whoever. If you can't figure out how to keep happiness up, come to forums and look up helpful threads, or start a new one. Try getting beliefs, or city state bonuses, or social policies to help combat the unhappiness. Every civ in the game is capable of producing an empire that doesn't constantly sink into unhappiness. Some need more luck than others to do this, but all of them can do it.

Click to expand...

I'm aware of all means to have more happiness, i don't need a thread. I'm doing exactly what is necessary to have happiness, still in my last game, I'm around 0 eventhough I built many happiness buildings, completed Tradition SP tree, secured many luxes, including one or two from city-states, but unfortunatelly due to fractal map and starting isolated on a isle (?), when i met some other civs they all had every of their lux traded. I could try to get Notre Dame, but as it's on Immortal and wanted to grab Petra first (started on desert + flood plains exclusively), I'm a little late on this tech. (eventhough i got a GE) I'll see. But I'm struggling, and that's with 4 cities only, and, of course, with Egypt and 4 temples built. I can't even imagine if I wanted to conquer ! Well, I couldn't, it's a fact. But it's not a topic about global happiness and how it is impeding.

It is happiness for me, it could be anything else for somebody else.

redwings1340 said:

I agree with this. I think uniques would be bad if they were completely imbalanced, but they aren't at all. There are a few civs that are a bit strong (Poland, cough, cough), but I think the civ designers did a really good job of balancing out each civ while making their uniques fun.

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For you it's Poland, for me it's Zulus and Huns. Can't count how many games I started near them and they ruined my games. (Huns on immortal, very close : they kept retaking a city with their crap notably battery rams in one turn, Zulus, averagely close, on prince : their impies turn out an easy war into a nightmare)

redwings1340 said:

Half the fun I have in this game comes from trying to roleplay out how I imagine each empire is, and I find that the uniques greatly help with allowing me to do that. I suppose I'm not going to play a peaceful Mongolia (though I believe Madjinn won a deity game with Mongolia using no UUs to prove its possible, so you are not required to use UUs), but why would I want to roleplay a peaceful mongolia? I feel like my uniques add to the immersion I feel in the civilization, and expand my roleplay options rather than limit them.

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I understand, although Mongolia is kinda the bad example, as they are known to be the civ with the most lasting UU, I mean it's one of the UUs you can use the longest in the game time.

The problem here is that most uniques play a rather short role. To counter that, we would need uniques through the whole game. It's impossible. For many reason. First, dev time. Uniques are hard to imagine, create, balance, whatever. Obviously we couldn't have 50 civs with only uniques in units for example. Second, how do you imagine uniques for empires that didn't last long or that appeared lately ? We just cant' have civs full of uniques. Doubly impossible.

Now they can be flavor, like the Incan Terrace, but does this really influences how we (role)play ? Not even close. It's just a graphical variation, and some tweak that engages you to settle near mountains, eventhough you are unsure to start near them. A better way would be to allow every civ to build terrace farms, provided they have the tech and the proper land. Getting rid of uniques would do all that.

And Inca is not just terrace farms and slingers. It's way more than that. Someone nowadays that lives in south america and feel incan, would have much more to say. Better let him to do his choices, rather than imposing them to him. By freeing his mind, with a bland civ, just with city names and CLSL to help him a bit.

Four pages in -- and no one has agreed with you that turning off uniques should be any kind of priority...

Naokaukodem said:

Actually... yes, why not? Having an option to turn uniques off would be cool.

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Well, out of a 100 things we could ask for developers to work on, this would be probably number 98 or 99. So why not? Because there is so much more important things that developers could be doing to tweak V.

Wouldn't it be simpler to create a civ with no uniques and start a game with all players as that civ? So it will require modding, rather than waiting for devs to add a feature. Maybe you can have a UA like : "The civ uses random colors and random city names" so it wont be confusing.

beetle said:

Four pages in -- and no one has agreed with you that turning off uniques should be any kind of priority...

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Oh, I never said it was a priority. I was just asking this wonderful community to consider my arguments. (and possibly, the developers too )

Seems most of you don't want to hear anything about it. I wonder why.

Well, out of a 100 things we could ask for developers to work on, this would be probably number 98 or 99.

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At least it's not 100... nor 101 !

So why not? Because there is so much more important things that developers could be doing to tweak V.

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That's what you think. Trust my experience, having no uniques would be marvelous. (for everydody)

I don't quite get it...having no uniques is like playing a civ but not using any of its UA UU UB. that's not too hard...just play austria and don't build coffeehouses and hussars, for example.
maybe it's an issue for you when playing multiplayer to make it absolutely balanced. but in general, the fact that there are special things is what makes the game interesting, and players like that feeling of uniqueness.

Sessy said:

I don't quite get it...having no uniques is like playing a civ but not using any of its UA UU UB. that's not too hard...just play austria and don't build coffeehouses and hussars, for example.
maybe it's an issue for you when playing multiplayer to make it absolutely balanced. but in general, the fact that there are special things is what makes the game interesting, and players like that feeling of uniqueness.

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That's a good observation. Using this civilization would be like using civilization 1.

there is a mod in the workshop
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=258143643

Sessy said:

I don't quite get it...having no uniques is like playing a civ but not using any of its UA UU UB. that's not too hard...just play austria and don't build coffeehouses and hussars, for example.
maybe it's an issue for you when playing multiplayer to make it absolutely balanced. but in general, the fact that there are special things is what makes the game interesting, and players like that feeling of uniqueness.

Click to expand...

I think I'm getting it a little bit more... for you, uniques are the tools, be them derisory, that help you incarnate the different civs... it's consistent. Like a theater actor that holds a wooden sword in order to play his role, or like city names and CLSLs for me. OK.

But I must insist on a part of roleplaying : recreating the history of one's own country, and i think I insisted on it in the OP. Incarnating such a country is a feeling mostly. And we can't code feelings, because they are already there, hidden in our soul, can we just do that there is the less interferences possible.

So, that you pick your country, even (particularly) if there are no uniques, and it's a new horizon of roleplaying that opens up. On the other hand, uniques can help roleplaying countries you do not personnally feel concerned by, or less, and/or do not have as much knowledge of.

Now i don't say roleplaying one's own country should be a preset objective or that it should be one's unique concern playing Civ, just that it can hit the mind at some point and that the feeling is groundbreaking. (for having experienced it in Civ2 back in the days ; trying to play it again, succeeded in installing and patching it but got repelled by not knowing anymore the features of the tech tree, like "which tech for a building that improves happiness", which seemed important to go past 2 pop cities, etc)

That's probably the reason why i got disappointed by all the sequels, that had uniques.

I've only scannned through this thread as it's grown... inexplicably. But here's my take anyway:

Unique game elements add flavor. It is cool to play Japan and have an army of Samurai taking on the evil American Empire's squirrelly little Minutemen. For those of us who play the game as storytellers, these are the moments that make Civ Civ.

There also seems to me to be a Cult of Balance in gaming these days (not just in Civ). We rant against a "stupid" AI that gains its only advantage from having imbalances, such as extra happiness or additional starting units. We deplore civs that have "gamebreaking" advantages or whose unique capabilities don't always line up with every possible circumstance. ("Jaguars are completely useless on ice age maps. Why even bother?!") But this is the point of playing a game. If everything were equal there would be no challenge. The goal is not to test your perfect strategy against someone else's perfect strategy, it's to see who can overcome obstacles or capitalize on their advantages better. It's Sun Tzu's world; we just play in it.

If you want perfect balance, play chess. (Of course, it doesn't have simultaneous turns. Completely unfair!!) If you want no uniques, play RISK. (But someone will get Australia. Totally gamebreaking!!)

This discussion is making me realize... I've (we've) been playing civilization for 20 years now. I started with civ1 shortly after it came out in the early 1990's, and I don't really play anything else. I've tried a few different games over the years but always come back to civ, 95% of my gameplay over the past two decades has been the civilization series. One of my favorite qualities of the series has been its replayability, and I think it's safe to now say that "civilization has stood the test of time." *rimshot*

As the years have progressed, the expectations and requirements for replayability have certainly increased. I played Civ1 about a dozen times and thought that it had unlimited replayability whereas with Civ5, I'm well over 100 games now and still want more variance. Regarding the OP, the game that he's describing- one with no unique attributes among the various civs- is what civ1 was. The only thing that defined playing Rome vs. playing America was that you were purple.

Moving forwards, my desires for the game are the polar opposite of the OPs. I want more variance between civs, to the point where playing a different civ is a completely different experience. One of the errors that may have occurred with Civ5 is that they tried to make too many civilizations; I'd much much rather have half as many civs in the game if they were twice as distinctive. Venice was something new and interesting but all the others are so similiar; similar enough that some of the more potent strategies (Cbow spams, horse-selling, etc)work across the board with much greater impact than exploiting what's unique about a civ.

So, more civs like Venice. Not similar in advantages, but similar in that it is so distinctive that it requires a different strategy to operate that civ, and such a strategy would be ineffective with other civs. When it comes to what makes a civ unique, I want LESS:

-this unit is 12% stronger and has a different name than when it's built by other civs
-this building which provides culture also provides faith for this civ
-while all civs can get bonuses from CSs, this civ gets 50% more of it
-this civ can make this improvement instead of a farm, for +1/+1/+1 instead of +2/0/0

and MORE:

-this civ has rediculous gold bonuses, but they can't do any of their own research
-this civ makes units 5 times stronger than other civs, but they can only make 1 unit per city
-this civ gets a 50% bonus to production AND iqnores unhappiness penalties when at war, but suffers -10 happiness when at peace with all other civs

ShakaKhan said:

This discussion is making me realize... I've (we've) been playing civilization for 20 years now. I started with civ1 shortly after it came out in the early 1990's, and I don't really play anything else. I've tried a few different games over the years but always come back to civ, 95% of my gameplay over the past two decades has been the civilization series. One of my favorite qualities of the series has been its replayability, and I think it's safe to now say that "civilization has stood the test of time." *rimshot*

As the years have progressed, the expectations and requirements for replayability have certainly increased. I played Civ1 about a dozen times and thought that it had unlimited replayability whereas with Civ5, I'm well over 100 games now and still want more variance. Regarding the OP, the game that he's describing- one with no unique attributes among the various civs- is what civ1 was. The only thing that defined playing Rome vs. playing America was that you were purple.

Moving forwards, my desires for the game are the polar opposite of the OPs. I want more variance between civs, to the point where playing a different civ is a completely different experience. One of the errors that may have occurred with Civ5 is that they tried to make too many civilizations; I'd much much rather have half as many civs in the game if they were twice as distinctive. Venice was something new and interesting but all the others are so similiar; similar enough that some of the more potent strategies (Cbow spams, horse-selling, etc)work across the board with much greater impact than exploiting what's unique about a civ.

So, more civs like Venice. Not similar in advantages, but similar in that it is so distinctive that it requires a different strategy to operate that civ, and such a strategy would be ineffective with other civs. When it comes to what makes a civ unique, I want LESS:

-this unit is 12% stronger and has a different name than when it's built by other civs
-this building which provides culture also provides faith for this civ
-while all civs can get bonuses from CSs, this civ gets 50% more of it
-this civ can make this improvement instead of a farm, for +1/+1/+1 instead of +2/0/0

and MORE:

-this civ has rediculous gold bonuses, but they can't do any of their own research
-this civ makes units 5 times stronger than other civs, but they can only make 1 unit per city
-this civ gets a 50% bonus to production AND iqnores unhappiness penalties when at war, but suffers -10 happiness when at peace with all other civs

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In civilization 1, their civilizations used to be so similar to each other that it was difficult to tell the difference between them. The only difference that I was able to tell was the beginning technologies and that still happened in civilization 4. However, in civilization 5, that stopped happening. Civilizations in civilization 5 all begin with the same technology except for The Huns who begin with animal husbandry researched. There used to be a maximum of 7 civilizations and when a civilization got destroyed, the other civilization of the similar color to the civilization that got destroyed reappears in another location in the map. That no longer happens.
The strategy for Venice becomes similar when all the other civilizations start using the OCC strategy. Similarities still occur in Civilization when the needed adjustments are made.

I honestly would like to see more UUs, it would make warfare more diverse and increase the time of your UU being useful, too many a time have I built up an army around my UUs and they've become outdated and had to be replaced by something boring