I always find that it's better to wait for an expansion or something before buying the game. Therefore I waited till the GOTY edition to buy it. But I also think that Civ 5 is not as well made as Civ 4. But it's worth more than a couple of pizzas 
Civilization 5 Rants Thread
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PhilBowles
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Having said all the above, I must shamefacedly admit to not having returned to my last Civ V game for well over a week - long enough to have more or less lost track... Starcraft and, you'll be happy to hear, Total War taking my time right now - I keep redoing the 'initial' campaign battle in Shogun 2 to work out how to minimise my losses while still killing the enemy army in one attack... Got my losses down to 25, but with a surviving enemy army of over 100 - seems hit or miss whether bowmen will do anything, and I'm undecided whether frontage or ranked depth is more helpful for melee units (I presume frontage vs. infantry, ranks vs. cavalry).
The "Diplomacy" is just terrible, I have to say. It is not even deserving of being called Diplomacy, hence the double quotes. As things stand, there is no reason to not exploit the AI by fake gold deals and constantly backstab it, because it will backstab you and go from friendly to hostile for any reason.
EDIT: Just as bad, information about diplomacy is deliberately hard to find or non-existent. It is a very big step backwards when compared to Civ IV.
EDIT: Just as bad, information about diplomacy is deliberately hard to find or non-existent. It is a very big step backwards when compared to Civ IV.
PhilBowles
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The info thing is very poor, certainly - especially with declarations of friendship and denunciations (is there anything that explains what these actually do?) Civs tend to behave as long as you have a bigger army in my experience - which is also largely my experience of other Civ games, the main difference being that if you placate them in advance they will usually abide by their deals rather than go straight from friendly to at war.
Just started a new game. Siam got cocky as soon as it had a bunch of Warriors and attacked Paris - and sued for peace (gold payment, gold per turn, plus a luxury resource that happened, in fact, to be gold) once the attack failed. They've just teched to Pikemen and I've just started researching Civil Service in response, so naturally they've decided that now would be a great time to declare war once again.
Should have finished them off the first time but I didn't have enough units to take either city and appear to be on an iron-free continent, so I'd have to do it the hard way. I decided it was more important to get my cities producing a few things that weren't units for a while.
Pratputajao
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I always find that it's better to wait for an expansion or something before buying the game. Therefore I waited till the GOTY edition to buy it. But I also think that Civ 5 is not as well made as Civ 4. But it's worth more than a couple of pizzas
Are they planing actual expansions? All is see is DLC for new Civs. Anything currently out there or in the works for an expansion to expand and add new mechanics, along the lines of "Beyond the sword" and such? I really dont know as I dont follow the game at all anymore.
Soryn Arkayn
Prince
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If an expansion pack was in development, we'd hear about it 6 months to a year before it was released. There's been nothing from Firaxis, therefore it's not happening.
Pratputajao
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As expected... Trickle out DLC and make you pay for every small improvement that is given to the game. Something like BTS will cost over $100 if done this way. Got to love the industry.
The difference is that the AI will now go from Friendly to Guarded or Hostile with just one bad event, eg you declared war on someone. Sometimes, not even that. On my latest Archipelago game, with a lot of small islands where there were no border issues, I spent the first half of the game friendly with almost everyone. And spent the other half guarded/hostile/denounced.
The army appears to affect the matters only to the extent that they won't attack you. I won a "Diplomatic victory" after wiping out 2/6 civs and reducing one more to just one inconsequential city.
In Civ4, you could play like Gandhi if you wanted to. In Civ 5, it seems that I have no option except being a Genghis Khan. Luckily, the combat is a ot of fun, even with the weak AI.
PS: I hate road maintenance. And being penalized too much for expanding - requiring EVERY freaking city to have the prerequisite buildings is just not fun. I am still liking Civ 5, but I can't help imagining what this game would have been like with a decent diplomacy and AI.
thecaesar
Will appear randomly
again.
Hey Phil thats great. I have not played CiV in a few weeks. The last game I tried as Russia and got whipped pretty good on emperor, using improved 1 UPT. After the big patch comes out, I'll give it another whirl.
I have been busy playing as France in Empire Total War. A game that is becoming more and more difficult, because I am having money issues. A few more battles and I should have thing in hand. The Iroquois will be destroyed and Philadelphia will be captured, bringing the Thirteen Colonies to their knees. After that its time to build up and get my regions organized etc. England, Scotland, and Ireland I took out in the first six turns, which would not be realistic in real life, but without the British fleet about has been a load off my mind.
As far as Shogun 2, its been a spell since I've played that. I mean to try the Rise of the Samurai expansion at some point upcoming. It is a great game though, very addictive. I have a friend in Canada and we get online and play the coop campaign, man is it fun. As far as the strategy of it, I am not sure, in most battles we seem to keep some tougher units in the rear to sneak up on the flank of the enemy. We seem to react to the enemy. When they hit us in force we counter attack and drive them back with our best samurai or ashigaru. You would be right on your infantry tactics, frontage vs. infantry, ranks vs. cavalry. But really I know so little about samurai tactics and really need to learn more. The naval battles were interesting, but a bit frustrating because the bow ships cannot get to close lest they be boarded. So its not like in Empire or Napoleon where you can go in line astern blazing away as you pass the enemy fleet. The interesting thing is that they have the Korean peninsula on the campaign map. I hope they add them at some point. The invasions of Korea and The Seven Year War should be made into an expansion. Take care
PhilBowles
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Yep, that's the standard way to win a diplo victory in all Civ games. Rumour has it that it can be done in the older games by actually engaging in diplomacy, but in practice it's a rarer way to win than doing so in Civ V (at least buying off city-states can be considered a form of diplomacy). At least in Civ V that inconsequential city gets as many votes as you do, you don't win just by out-populationing your surviving rivals.
But not if you wanted a diplomatic or domination victory.
It's not fun, which is a key issue with older Civ games for me - I find it's much less relevant in Civ V, since building erffect is in many cases independent of the city where you build it (e.g. Circus increases global happiness by 2 wherever it is, Monument has the same effect on global culture etc.), and the granary is no longer an auto-build.
Phil
I usually don't play at the top difficulty levels, and up until King (not sure about the name anymore) in Civ 4, you could definitely get a diplomatic victory by playing peacefully. Paying special attention to religions and civics was the key IMO. In Civ 5, the AI behaves much more erratically, and the religion+civics modifiers are gone. I also see very few green modifiers as compared to red modifiers on the diplomacy screen.
I am not sure what you mean by the last paragraph. I was talking about having to build a library, market, barracks etc in EVERY CITY to unlock the corresponding national wonder. A most unfun mechanic IMO.
Spot on. I definitely am not expecting a big expansion. It'll be more of the same sadly.
Milk the customers for all they are worth is their new modus operandi.
The source code will do nicely though. Probably in about a year or so.
PhilBowles
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About the level I normally played at too - Prince I think it was then, first 'hard' level; the equivalent of King in Civ V. I was admittedly being a little flippant; certainly it's possible to win peacefully in diplo victories, it's just neither as common nor as easy as treating diplo victories as domination victories you get slightly earlier through the UN.
But then in no Civ games have the victory conditions ever been separable enough to really make for validly different strategies, with the possible exception of Civ V due to the difficulty of getting a culture victory without heavy specialisation in culture techs - expansion is always superior to building up, since the extra slots give you more units, you can have more tech buildings, and tech underlies every victory condition (UN and Apollo Program are both high tech wonders, tech is essential to win domination, you can only get cultural victory if you tech to enough Wonders fist to install them in your three cities) - and because the old diplo victory condition was entirely based on your population you benefited from, you guessed it, expanding, not to mention annexing enemy cities.
Ah, I see what you mean about national wonders - yes, that is annoying. I usually only go for the national wonders for the buildings I was going to build everywhere anyway (like libraries and, especially as France, monuments). No, these things weren't compulsory to unlock things in earlier games, they were only mechanically compulsory - no city gets anywhere without a granary, a library wherever you could place one was as fundamental as it is now; markets were in fact more fundamental both because of the need to divide commerce between taxes and research (with research always getting the lion's share of the slider) and because of their value in controlling ill health. These days, national wonders aside, a market or granary is only needed situationally, in cities that are specialised for particular production or located in areas that benefit particularly from them. In earlier Civ games, where happiness was managed at a city level, every city needed a set of happiness buildings - at the national level in Civ V, any happiness building anywhere in your empire does the same thing, so unless you actually need a lot of them you don't need to duplicate them in every city. etc. etc.
Rupe
Chieftain
Something tells me we will never see it.
Bandobras Took
Emperor
Well, it is certainly true that every successful Civ 5 empire needs a high population and good progress in technology research, at the minimum. In that respect, waging limited wars to capture juicy cities or necessary resources is the way to go. I guess it is just the erratic AI and the lack of religion/civic bonuses that makes diplomacy even more artificial in Civ 5. The City States definitely improve diplomacy. Now, if only the main AI civs could behave in a more reasonable manner...
As for buildings, an example would be Barracks. There is no reason to build it in many cities, except to unlock Heroic Epic. On the whole though, the more flexible empire wide happiness system is definitely a good move in my book. Getting free food from maritime civs can also give you flexibility if you can ally with several of them. I also like having fewer units to keep track of and the infinitely more fun Civ 5 combat.
Well, it was a nice discussion
BTW, I have been on these boards from 2005. I lost my old email address and so had to make a new ID.
War wasn't needed for diplomatic victory at all. So called "poor man's domination" (conquer and vassal civs until you had enough population for winning diplo) was only one form of the Civ4 diplomatic victory.
Sorry but as your knowledge about Civ4 is obviously very limited you really shouldn't make strong claims about it.
don't wanna read through 69 pages.
Combatlog, hello?? ever heard of that?
At the end of the turn I get almost no information about enemy combat against me. I don't see it, I can't review it during my next turn. All i know is wheter own units actually got killed. That is a major flaw in a strategy game!
Combatlog, hello?? ever heard of that?
At the end of the turn I get almost no information about enemy combat against me. I don't see it, I can't review it during my next turn. All i know is wheter own units actually got killed. That is a major flaw in a strategy game!
I guess you play with combat videos disabled. I have the same complaint about the disable combat video... so I play with combat videos on, and get to watch 200 battles every turn in far away lands that have nothing to do with me... and get vertigo watching the screen whip around the map. The only thing that sucks worse is what you complain about... not knowing what happened to my own units.
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