First Impressions

Veneke said:

Hmm... that doesn't bode particularly well. While it does seem to have a fleet, they seem to be sailing almost independently of the embarked land forces behind them. At least the combat fleet seems to be in some kind of formation, however, that alone should make naval combat more interesting.

Did something happen to Austria that sent it on that CS spree, or is this something you reckon we should expect to happen when facing her?

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She wasn't at war yet. Also embarked units simply can't be run over - even if your melee ships manages that, it will lose all movement points and then be sitting duck for that fleet there.

Also yes, you should expect her to buy off all the CSes in a game and then turn them into production cities, which may prove problematic if you are at war with her and are relying on city-states to protect your flank or whatnot.

After about an hour with an isolated start as Austria. In a peninsula trapped by mountains, so no visiting anyone until embarkation (unless Carthage is in the game and comes by). Just 70 or so turns in on Epic (with the isolated start, the turns flew by).
- Ancient game is quite similar except for Shrines, and, by extension, founding a Pantheon, which had lots of interesting choices (I had lots of sheep and cattle and so picked culture for pastures).
- None of the SPs help faith at all except under Piety (and the lower row of branches allow to buy different GPs with faith, though it's totally ambiguous if that's an opener or closer ability).
- The average length of historical text in the Civopedia for new entries is way shorter than existing entries, for Wonders at least.
-- On that subject, this is super nitpicky, but "The Great Wall", "Great Firewall", where did "the" go? Also, the Great Wall entry mentions China about a million times while Great Firewall doesn't mention China at all. Again no big deal, just that the flavour text seems rushed.

Not much else to say... yet!

smallfish said:

1. Haven't tried this out much yet - I was spreading faith with missionaries to a empire that had no religion of its own or any core cities in range of the other major religions, and it didn't seem to influence them much (Austria - completely neutral until I did some espionage boogabaloo and she was hostile as heck)

2/ Steal techs, wait for spy to discover a nefarious plot or two... and view what their cities are producing.

Spoiler :

Haven't tried to rig a CS myself, given Austrian marriage of all the city-states and then DOWing me.

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As long as there is a diplo penalty to civs that follow another religion I will be happy.

And it seems Espionage is the only disappointment in this expansion pack. Destroying improvements, sabotaging production, poisoning the food, maybe stealing a luxury resource for a turn or two, they could have done so much with the system. For shame...

Man the coup mechanic neds to be reworked it completely negates any cit-state diplo. I had spies in Rio de Janeiro and Colombo, I did their quests, I spent money, but Pacals policy of stage coup move spy stage coup repeat negated everything. He won the RNG war even though I had a level 3 spy in Colombo right before he dowd and bam 200 turns of effort gone. Espionage is just so annoying why bother with city states when you get rigged or couped continuosly.

Add in randomn quest factors and its beyond belief. I have won all over time quest, dowd when wanted, gifted gold when bonuses, built wonders, and acquired resources, and enemy spies have made sure no one likes me. Endless mayan gold and spies have them with majority of city-states and no one care. They're too busy stealing tech from my cap with constabulary, police station and spy and succeeding 75% of the time. Can we have an option to turn Espionage off because it is seriously annoying. Whats the point of all this new city-state diplo is randomn coup rng negates it.

smallfish said:

She wasn't at war yet. Also embarked units simply can't be run over - even if your melee ships manages that, it will lose all movement points and then be sitting duck for that fleet there.

Also yes, you should expect her to buy off all the CSes in a game and then turn them into production cities, which may prove problematic if you are at war with her and are relying on city-states to protect your flank or whatnot.

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Oh, yes. I forgot that embarked units can protect themselves now.

My first impression was that at 975.7 MB this is one huge expansion.
Second impression is that Austria is OP just from its description on the setup screen.
My third impression is that it's a bit after 5 AM here in California so I'm not going to start a game even with the rich away of new leaders and features.

I have to wait a week to play as im out of town :| A few things I've noticed though.

1) Austria is pretty OP and i will make sure she isn't an AI in my game!
2) I've found espionage annoying in almost every Civ game so far, in civ 4 at endgame even with by far the best espionage empire almost every city of mine permanently had there water poisoned or were unhappy due to espionage, not fun... While I'm not happy about the inevitably large amount of techs the AI will steal from me in Civ5, atleast i won't have to deal with poison water/unhappy hit spam again!

Is anyone live streaming games? I've already watched Mad dijins useful mechanic overview vids but i want to see some actual gameplay!

Gali said:

Man the coup mechanic neds to be reworked it completely negates any cit-state diplo.

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I am sure it will be either balanced later by official patch or here by Thal

My idea:
chance of coup by spying should be lessened
in line with how strong relation the CS has with another player...

like if CS is ally with player A,
spy of player B should have VERY little chance of making the coup...

Crossing my fingers that the devs will wait a bit for feedback and then balance out some of the more egregious aspects of G&K. That may take some time; I seem to recall that it took them quite a while to nerf the insanely OP Cossack UU in Civ 4.

smallfish said:

I'm not sure about that gifting shtick, it could have been from before when she was friends/allies with them. It was a lot of Keshiks, only one Minuteman though (got butchered by one of my first gatlings)

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On watching MadDjinn's CS/diplo video it looks like this is a new special thing that Militaristic CSs do; they will give you UUs from Civs which aren't in the game provided you have researched the technology. There was an example in the video where one CS window mentioned that it had the technology for Keshiks.

I played for a handful of turns last night, but I had to hit the hay because I had work this morning. I’m running on at most 3 hours of sleep. I hope I’m not too sleepy to play when I get home after 5 PM. In regards to my initial and extremely short first impression, I was delighted to start next to citrus. Moreover, I was thrilled to see Vatican City. Further, I liked how they added to the aesthetics of the interface. I checked out the tech tree, it’s cool how they re-divided the eras.

Damn it, I want to play! But if I could have my way entirely, I’d go back to sleep for a few hours, and then play.

Something that hasn't been brought up in the thread yet; what are people's impressions of turn times? There was talk before release that G&K might make improvements to the coding that should speed things up a little bit.

I haven't begun playing yet, but I perused the Civilopedia this morning. Here's some interesting tidbits:

Battering Ram can only attack cities and upgrades to Trebuchet rather than Pikeman.

Atlatlists are available from agriculture and are cheaper than archers

Triremes (except Dromon) upgrade to Caravels
Dromon upgrade to Galleases
Privateers upgrade to Destroyers
Caravels upgrade to Ironclads (which can now enter ocean, but are slowed)
Galleases upgrade to Frigates
Frigates upgrade to Battleships
(I forget what Ironclads upgrade to)

Ottomans UA gives them naval units from all successful naval combat, not just against Barbarians

I'm sure the answer is no, but is there a ''no espionage'' button in the advanced settings?

If not, let's hope someone mods it in

Veneke said:

Something that hasn't been brought up in the thread yet; what are people's impressions of turn times? There was talk before release that G&K might make improvements to the coding that should speed things up a little bit.

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One review I read supports this to some extent, although I suspect there won't be much difference to people playing on low-end systems like myself:

Perhaps the most welcome changes to Civ V are under the hood. The underlying code has been sped up to reduce the time calculating between turns, but there's still a longer delay than I'd like.

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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...reviews/9752-Civilization-V-Gods-Kings-Review

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.

Make peace with Pacal and launch a city-state diplomatic rush. Do love how you keep influence with city-states that dow on you because of allies. Rash of luxury quests and demands for GP spring up. Trade with pacal for the luxuries since hes fake friendly, plotting against me in 2 turns. Waste 2300 faith on a Gp for influence and spend 5 k on getting to allied in case Pacal dows and locks in war.

Pacal then conducts 8 coups in 20 turns and succeds in 6 undoing all that careful planning. I can handle a 66% enemy tech steal rate in a capital with constabulary, counterspy, spy national wonder and police station. I can handle firends and close allies stealing techs I cant match because I'm ahead. However, I'm going to look for a mod to get rid of coups becuase this is ridiculous. There is a coup EVERY 5 turns and last turn before I wrote this Pacal launched 2 coups. How he has a 80% success rate on coups when my coup odds are 52% is beyond me but save scumming counter coup is the only counter it seems.

Its also nice that Im pledgeing to protect these city-states for resting influence and thus every coup costs an additional 20 influence or a diplo hit with Dido who is still at war with Pacal.

Found out how he has so much money 5 custom houses in his cap.

Another 2 turns another 2 succesful Mayan coups. Can I use quests, no there are none, money please don't have 10k to waste. Just launch counter coups and its done. also that enhancer beliief that increases religious spread rate is Op. On a Pangaea every city-state and even 80% of civ cities are mine. One or 2 Gp pops to kick start and Im converting pacal who was the only other early religion evem though he had universal belief and large cities.

I haven't gone deep into a single game yet, but my strongest initial impression is that teching is quite a bit slower in general, thanks to the reworked tech tree removing most of the popular slingshots.

The Mayans also seem to be an early game powerhouse; able to build Archers from turn 1 with no research required (and cheaper ones), plus the extra Faith and Science from the UB.

In the first game I started up, William was right next to me; he founded a Pantheon first, chose the +1 faith from Desert tiles (his capital was smack in the middle of a ton of desert/flood plains), and had founded Christianity before turn 50. Pretty ridiculous.

Andulias said:

Two questions.

1. How much of an impact does religion have on the diplomacy? How important is it when forming diplomatic blocks and how long does it take to set-up and have an influence on diplomacy?

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Religion has a reasonably negligible impact on diplomacy.

Sidenote: espionage has a massive impact on diplomacy. I would definitely say too much.

2. Is Espionage the disappointment that some of us feared it would be? Is stealing techs and plans everything you can do with it?

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Well if you feared it would be disappointing then it won't be, but if you thought it would be as good as religion, then you will be perhaps. It's fine (in fact, it's definitely good, particularly when compared to Civ4), but it's just not quite up to the same standard as religion at this stage.

DysprosiumJudas said:

-Finally, Austria is so hilariously OP. I'm serious. Just ridiculously OP.

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Remember that she has to forgo the bonuses she would otherwise get from being an ally of the city-state she marries.

blackcatatonic said:

On watching MadDjinn's CS/diplo video it looks like this is a new special thing that Militaristic CSs do; they will give you UUs from Civs which aren't in the game provided you have researched the technology. There was an example in the video where one CS window mentioned that it had the technology for Keshiks.

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Yes, each militaristic CS will give you a specific unique, which is nice flavour. In one of the last games I played, though, I think I ended up with about 8 Naresuan's Elephants, though, because I didn't progress further up the cavalry tech path. You can gift them straight back, though.

Every thing but Spies seem like good touches, I never liked the spies, but it does sound like trying to monoply all the Culture states will not be as easy, so maybe it is a good. This work day will drag lol.