Prince and more generally boring game

Naokaukodem

Millenary King
Joined
Aug 8, 2003
Messages
3,933
I have hard time to enjoy the game especially when I'm playing Prince. In Prince everything seems easy, but you are so much crippled by unhappiness that it's not fun anymore. You can't roll up the entire map in one shot, and it is very frustrating. That's why instead of Prince I often play settler, for the happiness bonuses, but I usually quit for lack of interest. There's a mod that moves happiness off but not for vanilla which I only have. Most of the time I feel super-powerfull but I can't use that power, too bad.

Also I feel there's generally a lack of feeling in that game. You can have +1000 research but you may not feel it too much. It's the same for RAs, I can sign plenty of them but not seeing the effects. (I know how they work)

Basically this game is so slow and "reasonable" and I feel powerless in speading the things up... for example wonders effects are not fun like in Civ2.

This game seems to have been designed to be played in harder modes, but I don't have too much fun sneaking between the drops to achieve my victory, just for the sake of it.

I think there's a real problem.
 
The lower the difficulty, the longer it will take before the AI has luxuries available for trading. Personally, I find happiness more difficult to manage on Prince than I do on Emperor.
 
Are you puppeting or annexing a lot of captured cities? And how many of your own cities do you settle? Generally (although I forget if it was different in vanilla), you only want to settle 3-5 cities, make sure they all have access to new luxuries, and only puppet/annex really good cities like capitals and raze the rest. You might also consider limiting your own population growth if it's getting in the way... you said you felt superpowerful, so stunting your own growth shouldn't be much of an issue.
 
You'll see the effects of multiple RA's more on Epic or Marathon games. They help on all speeds but feel like less when you are already progressing at a good clip. When I played on normal speed I used to sometimes not even notice when they were completed and be surprised when I no longer had one. Since sciences take so long on marathon/Epic the first thing I noticed was you definately realize it when an RA is expended as it wipes like 10-20 turns of research off your schedule. So helpful. :)

Happiness is a love/hate thing for me too. I'm glad they found some way to limit ICS as it isn't a very realistic strategy and wouldn't cost you nothing in real life to found a new city. However, as happiness is so severe (nerfed science, production, and growth if you go negative) I'd rather it was like civ IV where each city cost you money instead initially before it could cover its own cost. Colonies are an investment--this makes sense. They don't make the rest of your empire unhappy. This global happiness thing is just odd. When ideologies hit you either have a source of loads of new happiness and can expand/war again or you get stuck on the wrong side of the influence wagon and it puts you in civil disorder. :(
 
Move to King. Happiness issues won't get better, but the pace is definitely faster than on Prince, without you having to stick with a 1-for-all tactic.

Also, if your title is correct and you play Vanilla, then I wonder how you are struggling with ICS.
 
I have hard time to enjoy the game especially when I'm playing Prince. In Prince everything seems easy, but you are so much crippled by unhappiness that it's not fun anymore.

Playing VANILLA, there was a courthouse bug which gave three to many happiness per City, as a consequence, in the early days it was very easy to City spam. At some point in the year 2012, this bug was rectified. City spamming became much more difficult and the only way to make it work is by good use of the happiness Policies, in particular the right hand side of the Freedom Policy tree.

I have learned by trial and error not to complete any of the Policy trees, but just to head for the happiness Policies from each of the first four trees then onto Freedom.

Good Luck.
 
Playing VANILLA, there was a courthouse bug which gave three to many happiness per City, as a consequence, in the early days it was very easy to City spam. At some point in the year 2012, this bug was rectified. City spamming became much more difficult and the only way to make it work is by good use of the happiness Policies, in particular the right hand side of the Freedom Policy tree.

I have learned by trial and error not to complete any of the Policy trees, but just to head for the happiness Policies from each of the first four trees then onto Freedom.

Good Luck.

It was the patch right before G&K that removed the undocumented courthouse feature.

Note that G&K also greatly increased the advantages of finishing Tradition ASAP; in Vanilla, finishing Tradition can wait quite a bit longer.
 
I have hard time to enjoy the game especially when I'm playing Prince. In Prince everything seems easy, but you are so much crippled by unhappiness that it's not fun anymore. You can't roll up the entire map in one shot, and it is very frustrating. That's why instead of Prince I often play settler, for the happiness bonuses, but I usually quit for lack of interest. There's a mod that moves happiness off but not for vanilla which I only have. Most of the time I feel super-powerfull but I can't use that power, too bad.
I think the mod you refer to is called Really Advanced Setup. If you have another mod in mind, you may want look at RAS.

Another mod to consider would be Ingame Editor. You can use it to add luxuries, if you want a happiness boost. You can also use it to add happiness buildings, including buildings which your civ normally can not have. Some of those buildings have no maintenance cost.
 
Wasn't Vanilla released in the summer of 2010? We're almost four years on, no wonder you get bored.

ps. get the expansions.
 
Are you puppeting or annexing a lot of captured cities? And how many of your own cities do you settle?

I usually puppet every conquered cities, because I'm not finished with national wonders and can get more SPs. (with only two founded cities included capital most of the time) The problem if I don't conquer those cities but raze them, is that the other civs will settle again there, and everything would have to be started again. Plus, it fuels my economy.

The thing is that when everything's OK, you have the strategic resources (iron), the army, your economy can stand it, diplomatically you have a designed victim, etc. etc. but you just can't afford to conquer more because of unhappiness. Civ franchise is designed to make open opportunities as to conquer your enemies, but those opportunities are ALWAYS failed by unhappiness at a point or the other...
 
Vanilla is boring and crappy in comparison to G&K and BNW. Get the expansions, Vanilla isn't really a finished product, more like a beta phase of the game.
 
Happiness gets a hell of a lot easier to manage when you get Gods & Kings for Religion. Brave New World doesn't offer much by way of Happiness to the early game but adds tons late-game through ideologies.

TL: DR buy the expansions.
 
but you just can't afford to conquer more because of unhappiness.

Even post all patches it is quite possible to have as many as fifty Cities even on Deity VANILLA. Like I said earlier it is down to your Policy management. For what it is worth I found the best way to do it is to treat the game as if you are going for a culture victory in the early stages. If you expand/conquer too quickly then you will spend the whole game fighting unhappiness.
 
Even post all patches it is quite possible to have as many as fifty Cities even on Deity VANILLA. Like I said earlier it is down to your Policy management. For what it is worth I found the best way to do it is to treat the game as if you are going for a culture victory in the early stages. If you expand/conquer too quickly then you will spend the whole game fighting unhappiness.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying that opportunities are spoiled by unhappiness only. This makes the game boring.

Thank you very much for your advices you all.
 
I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying that opportunities are spoiled by unhappiness only. This makes the game boring.

Thank you very much for your advices you all.

So basically the OP wants civ to be about killing everything that moves and taking everything in sight without any repercussions.

Sorry, this is a strategy game, not a shooter.....

Indiscriminate killing is not what this game is about.
 
I have thought a lot of that about why is this game so boring. :confused: I tried to start a game again, but spent more time on updating Steam and adjusting the graphic settings than actually playing the game. I just could not take it.

I think they dumbed down everything too much and took away the soul at the same time. They did the same to X-com. You could say that Firaxis is broken. Ruined two of my favourite series.

Before these games used to be more like simulators where lots of different things and situations could happen. But now the trend seems to be to make them more like simple card or board games that you can play with 6 sided dice. Yet at the same time, even when you have less cities and units, the game play is still slower than on the older versions.

I found also this analytic review that tries to understand what is wrong in the game:
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html
 
I'd tell you that article is a dated, whiney piece, lacking in relevance in 2014, but the thread title is labeled [vanilla]. In any case, Civ 5 has turned out to be a fantastic game, but there's always a few who will stick to the previous version 'till someone pries it from their cold, dead fingers.
 
In any case, Civ 5 has turned out to be a fantastic game, but there's always a few who will stick to the previous version 'till someone pries it from their cold, dead fingers.

I'll have you know that my fingers work perfectly well after spending half an hour laying on a rock sunbathing!

All the versions of Civ5 have their good points and they all have areas that need sorting, it is down to us as individuals to decide which ones we want to play. My personal opinion is that BNW is flawed because of the bulbing, SS, BR and Petra, these are the main reasons why I choose not to play it.

I am just a plain old lizard who is happy in my own environment, the rest of you chameleons like to change colour and habitat at the first given opportunity. Some of you never really got to know very much about any of the habitats where you have lived!!
 
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