First Impressions

one thing i like mid-late game is buying GP's with faith.

Played Russia/Small/Continents plus/ standard in my first game. A couple features really stood out to me for better and for worst;
1. First, I was disappointed upon discovering mathematics that instead of the Hanging Gardens providing 10 plus food, it only provides 6 (as well as a free garden). Nevertheless I though that nerf was unnecessary, and brought the HG from a top tier wonder to an Angkor Wat

2. Next, I don't like how you are unable to burn great ppl for golden ages (except 4 GA). By the end of the game I had so many unused admirals and generals that my workers had trouble improving my land. Also, if they nerfed the GS, they should have nerfed the GE.

3. On the flip side, I did enjoy the quest oriented civ state diplomacy, the stellarness of the new naval combat, the massive amounts of happiness from mercantile CS, as well as espionage (I love how the names are tailored to different civs, like mine as Russia were named Anastasia and mikhail (Gorbachev)

All in all, it's been Pretty great. Can't wait to have a population book with polders on flood plains with the Dutch

They AI just kicked my ass on prince. I'm going to have to either pay attention to what I'm doing or play sober now. This is a vast improvement.

ahawk said:

7) The AI isn't significantly better. I still get Settlers and Workers put right infront of my army when I am at war with the owners of those units.

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Isn't that part of the strategy? Okay, throwing in Settlers during a fight is rather stupid but I've had a couple of times in Vanilla that the AI placed workers close to its cities, making it more difficult for me to get my units into the right position to attack.

ahawk said:

My first impressions (Standard difficulty):

4) Sort of don't like Spies not being actual units. From a user interface perspective, Espionage has been done well, but simplicity isn't always the same thing as fun. I actually liked having to move the spies, pick the shortest route to a city, and anticipate how enemy spies might move on my roads. It's nitpicking, though, so it's not a serious problem.

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I remember in either the original or Call to Power, you could make an actual spy unit. They didn't have to respect open borders, so you could reveal territory with a stealth unit. Sometimes on the road to a civ, you'd run into one coming your way. Those little guys were great. I miss them.

The Garibaldi said:

espionage (I love how the names are tailored to different civs, like mine as Russia were named Anastasia and mikhail (Gorbachev)

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No Anna Chapman then?

This does answer a question of mine about where the spies' 'names' come from; whether they're predetermined by the Civ or whether you can custom name them yourself. It sounds like it's the former.

Thanks for posting all your experiences, guys; keep them coming! I'm getting a vicarious thrill from reading them while I wait for the gentle thud of an Amazon box on my doormat on Friday.

I registered to post this. I started my first game Marathon/Large/Continents+/King as the Mayans. The Pyramid is pretty much insane. I started by going straight to writing and building the great library in my capital which I used to to purchase Philosophy and started building the Oracle while I worked towards getting to Theology. When I get it I started building the Mosque and used the free great prophet to found the first religion. I took Church Property/Pagodas.

(I had God of the Sky since in my immediate area there were 3 cows and at my first two expansions which I made after all this wondering there were several sheep/horses.) I used my starting warrior and intial scout (which got upgraded into the Atatalist) to pick on my close neighbor Kamehameha to prevent him from expanding. All in all I really like things so far. I'm currently in the Industrial Era (current year 1200 AD) because of how fast that +2 science from every Pyramid builds up.

With Pagodas and Liberty I was able to expand without ever getting close to unhappy. I did have some gold issues early on though once I got markets up and temples with +10% gold I was able to start raking in cash.

It seems to be a bit easier.
I started a game on emperor, and I didn't have such a great start and was a little slow expanding, but I stayed near the top.

I am now up to the renaissance and about to conquer one of the cities of Austria. They declared war on me real early, and despite being way behind me in score continued to demand outragous things for peace.

I like the change to unit hitpoints. The composite crossbowman is a nice addition. I seemed to have maxed my religion rather early, and now just make prophets and spread religion, though I don't see that it's doing me any good.

D712 said:

This is identical to how I am playing my first game, haha. I have the third most popular religion, but I may be wrong because of my conquest of Japan.

I found the AI to be MUCH more aggressive..

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Is this true? I stopped playing V and went back to IV because I became tired by how the game constantly shoe-horned you into having to play towards a military domination victory, or face being crushed by whichever AI had ruthlessly dominated everything else on the map.

I was kind of hoping that the AI would be a bit less aggressive, or at least more considered (no more 'you are my best friend' -> 'crows will feast on your entrails' in the space of one turn).

The impression I get from reading reviews and the first impressions of players is that the AI isn't any more or less aggressive than it was, but rather that religion, espionage and improved CS and RA mechanics have given it more reasons to consider lasting friendship as a viable option.

That said, the leader flavour table that's been posted here does seem to show that some AIs have had their aggressive flavours toned down a notch or two.

blackcatatonic said:

The impression I get from reading reviews and the first impressions of players is that the AI isn't any more or less aggressive than it was, but rather that religion, espionage and improved CS mechanics have given it more reasons to consider lasting friendship as a viable option.

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Lasting friendship is indeed a viable option

Even after I smashed her armies and took her capital, because I kept trading with her and sharing intrigue, Dido would periodically renew our deals. In fact, she has gone from "NO OPEN BORDERS" to "7550 PLUS ALL UR URANIUMS FOR OPEN BORDERS", which though not that big. Moreover, unlike Bismarck, Maria or Ramesses, she and Spain haven't denounced me for ages.

At this point people are less inclined to believe me as a civilization interested in building relations, however, which is completely understandable given the way I just rolled four civilizations.

But still, nice change of pace. Who knows what our relations will be like in 2000AD?

Pacific said:

Is this true? I stopped playing V and went back to IV because I became tired by how the game constantly shoe-horned you into having to play towards a military domination victory, or face being crushed by whichever AI had ruthlessly dominated everything else on the map.

I was kind of hoping that the AI would be a bit less aggressive, or at least more considered (no more 'you are my best friend' -> 'crows will feast on your entrails' in the space of one turn).

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I hear from somewhere else that its possible to have an overly aggressive neighbor do all your dirty crushing needs if they really like your religion and you in general.

Don't take my word for it.

ahawk said:

8) Is it me, or does the tech tree seem like it takes fewer turns per tech?

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All I know is I was in the Medieval era for a while, looked up, and was surprised to note that the game was still in the BCs. This was on Epic and maybe I forgot this being a normal thing.

And while I had highest literacy (guess I should, playing on Warlord), I wasn't bounding towards science or anything. None of my beliefs were for beakers.

Tsuihousha said:

I registered to post this.

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Welcome to CFC!

So far I've got no further than the early ADs (recently started a second game after my first ended in the conquering of my capital by the Ottomans after all the green modifiers with everyone and lack of wars had lulled me into letting my guard down).

Leader: Pacal the Great (Maya)
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Random
Size: Random

First things first:

Graphics and interface: Not a fan of the new opening animation, but I do like the fact that hitting 'Esc' now cuts past it immediately - okay it leaves the loading screen up longer, but even the old intro movie (which I loved) got boring. Also not a fan of the main screen background, but you only have to look at it while loading the game! The baroque columns etc., which hadn't really been noticeable in the preview shots, are a bit obtrusive and jarring with the standard Civ V interface look.

Civilizations: First impression was that none of the abilities much appealed. Taken in context with their UA and UB, the Maya at least turn out to be very distinctive in-game - although I expect Pottery will now be the go-to tech at the start of the game for everyone, not just the Maya, not needing to bother with Archery immediately is a bonus, as is getting what is probably the game's cheapest military unit. The Pyramid is a ridiculous upgrade to the Shrine - not just doubling its effect, but adding +2 science, all on a building cheaper than the granary.

So far my only experience with other civs from G&K has been meeting Carthage (who I've had no relations with) and Attila. I'm the kind of purist who didn't like the idea of the 'not a real civ' Huns being introduced, but psychologically it's great running into them - "Oh no, the Huns are my closest neighbours". "Wittenburg wants me to denounce the Huns. Hmm, how suicidal am I feeling?" - it would be a bit pointless from a design perspective, but for flavour I wonder if Civ should have 'non-player civs' that can't be taken by players but are in the game to represent peoples important enough historically to be represented, but who don't fit the 'civ' criterion? The psychological impact of the Huns will wear off if they continue to play in this vein: Attila is low-scoring; despite the fact that I did indeed denounce him and he's coveted my lands from the start he's spent the game just shouting at me about barbarian invasions without doing anything, and may not even have any horses.

Diplomacy: Some of the green modifiers are a nice touch, as are notifications such as "You kept your promise to the Ottomans not to expand" (although that appears to have no attendant modifiers). "We have no shared borders" is a good default positive that makes the AI more likely than previously to remain peaceful. Wars seem to be infrequent and, when I did declare one, Catherine made a reasonable peace offer - offering me peace and a token sum of gold when I wasn't particularly close to her territory, rather than demanding everything I had, when she was having to fend off the Ottomans. I did get the warmonger penalty just for that war dec (which was intended to help my relations with the Germans and Ottomans, but since I never attacked I didn't get the 'common enemy' bonus), and didn't notice it wearing off, but it also didn't result in chain denunciations (indeed the AI didn't seem to go for denunciations in that first game).

EDIT: Some of the old oddities exist. When Catherine made peace, she defaulted to Friendly with the tooltip "There have been no events that have affected relations between you" - firstly, doesn't a war count? And secondly, even if not shouldn't she then default to neutral unless she has a thing for guys in bizarre headgear? At least peace treaties no longer appear to count as a favourable trade.

I think Open Borders is probably now later than it ought to be in the tech tree - I do however like embassies as an idea, and moving RAs to Education makes the early game last longer. If I have a diplomacy complaint it's that diplomacy now feels too passive, as in Civ IV - you can more or less get by ignoring it since most of the time you won't get negative modifiers unless you actively try and annoy people, and will usually stay onside with them. But this may be an artefact of the game stage - it felt as though I was going a long time without wars, but then the early game is now longer with slower tech times (and the Ottomans just go to show I can't rely on peace indefinitely). I didn't get any particular feel for the personalities of the civs under the new AI, but again I'd need to complete several games to judge that.

City-States: The new types are nice, although being the first to find a religious city-state arguably gives too much of a bonus (double faith as well as gold - in my new game meeting Wittenberg gave me 8 faith straight away), and faith generally is more valuable than a similar amount of culture since it's a resource you can spend, and so do more with the more you've got. It just so happens that Siam is my favourite vanilla Civ V civ, and already generally regarded as one of the game's strongest; double faith from CS friends may turn out to be much, much more than a minor change to the UA. Happiness from mercantile states was something I didn't notice until I lost it, but also good. Multiple quests and the expanded types are good, and in some cases add character ("Wittenberg is bankrupt"), but CSes still play in basically the same way and I haven't noticed a difference in the use of gold (I was able to buy influence with Belgrade while allied with them, for instance). I haven't tried demanding tribute from them, though. Pledge to Protect now actually works as an option, but for some reason I no longer get notifications when I'm a friend or ally with a CS, which would be good to have back.

Combat: Combat is slightly slower under the new system; mostly this just seems to make it easier for me to extricate my units before they die, with scouts now being pretty resilient due to their fast movement and the difficulty in one- or two-shotting units. Mostly I've just fought isolated barbarians, though. Barbarian AI is if anything worse - although the AI will now move damaged units out of trouble, it still won't retreat with barbarian archers, it still attacks over rivers and wanders around cities getting shot, and archers will often not fire back without any reason not to. Losing the ranged attack on galleys also makes them easier to deal with. The changes to the combat system do however made ranged garrisons less effective, since it takes more shots to score a kill and even a slight tech advantage (spearmen rather than warriors) noticeably reduces the damage archers deal, so barbarians wandering near your cities are still a nuisance, and the AI does seem better at using them to pillage or pick off stray workers, much as it did in Civ IV.

My only wartime experience so far is with the Ottomans, who gathered a large army outside Chichen Itza before attacking - having seen it there I was moving my Swordsman to relieve the city, and that was when the Ottomans declared war, surrounded the Swordsman, and shot it to pieces. They then ignored Chichen Itza to move on Palenque rather than giving me the chance to re-arm - that attack was executed well with Warriors attacking and ranged behind, and with the AI only attacking with units likely to survive the attack (the Ottomans lost no units in that brief war). This is one instance, and Civ V AI can play wars surprisingly well on occasion so it may not be typical (one of the best-executed vanilla Civ V attacks I've faced was from the Ottomans), but the combination of a sensible unit mix (catapults and composite bows do a lot of damage), good target selection (Chichen Itza wasn't very valuable, nor was it a threat, despite being closer to Ottoman territory - possibly being a holy city made them prioritise Palenque) and a combat system that now makes it very hard for a pop 7 city with a garrison unit to kill even one attacking unit when hit by several at once definitely helped the AI.

Tech tree: Slower teching makes for an interesting early game; as above the changes to when certain diplomatic options become available will change the way the game plays. The dominance of religion makes that tech route obviously very desirable, so that militarising early may no longer be the default option. I haven't encountered later-game changes yet. Drama and Poetry being needed to develop Theology makes that route a big investment, and beelining it at the expense of other techs was a bad move in my first game (intuitively, getting Theology ASAP should maximise the Maya bonus - however you don't necessarily want to start churning out GPs that early in the game - Atlatlist and Pyramid give the Maya a pretty huge early game boost, so that they can wait a bit for the GP bonuses; how early are you going to want your only Long Count engineer? Admiral?).

Haven't looked at the changes to Wonders in much detail yet, but Terracotta Army seems a little underwhelming - essentially it replaces the old Stonehenge effect, but comes out later and gives only 6 culture rather than 8 (and an artist rather than an engineer). In my new game I'm stuck in a desert so I'll try getting Petra.

GPs: Not much to note, except that the Great Scientist now gives a research point bonus, as it did in Civ IV, rather than a free tech by default, which is a good improvement.

Policies: Only noting the change in Liberty's free settler, which makes the tree less of an auto-pick.

Religion: Saving the best till last. This is obviously the feature that has most obviously changed the early game. I don't like the limitation on number of religions - it was a weak point of the Civ IV religion system, and religion seems likely to be even more dominant in Civ V. Playing on Emperor I feel that, since they have gone down the restricted religion route, it should probably be harder for the player to be among those founding a religion; I've had no difficulty doing so in either game so far (although, granted, this is playing as a civ that has a strong early faith bonus). Either way, decoupling religion per se from the tech tree is good - plainly there's a relationship since investing in religious tech increases faith, but you're no longer constrained to follow a religious tech path to get early religion, and you may well have the option of allying yourself with a religious city state while you militarise or focus on the Education etc. tech path.

I was leery of the way religion was to be introduced, as it looked gimmicky and mechanical, there more to placate Civ IV fans than to enhance gameplay, but now playing the system I like it a lot. The faith resource works well, and the way different religious choices are structured - Pantheon beliefs being conceptually animistic and to a large extent based on terrain features and small, mainly early-game benefits, and later empire-wide and city-specific bonuses - is interesting. You can even essentially recreate a Civ IV religion - which resembles a Civ V religion with the belief that gives +1 happiness for every city following the religion and the one that gives a happiness bonus from temples.

Religion seems to spread very slowly, at least without trade routes - Tikal was close to my holy city of Palenque, but I still had to spread religion with a missionary. Tengrism only naturally spread to Uxmal, founded after I'd started the religion, with Palenque as the closest city, and with a trade route established soon after the city was founded (I'd chosen Messenger of the Gods as my Pantheon belief - not a good choice when I'd beelined Theology since it then took a while to develop the wheel...). I haven't yet reached a point where it spreads to foreign cities, and so haven't seen the diplomatic effects of religion in action.

Overall I'm impressed with the changes I've seen so far, including the ones I was wary of to begin with.

Moderator Action: Merged into the general "first impressions" thread.

First of all, I am a convert! I was a huge Civ fan (since Civ I) but was dissapointed in CiV, but G&K have made the game something that I enjoy playing. I can actually declare war on someone and not have the entire globe go to war with me three turns later, no middle-game lul, fantastic... Now to the point of my post.

chazzycat said:

espionage seems to strongly discourage building a super-science capital. better to spread it out.

the celts are pretty fun with the religion, somehow Ethiopia was faster though...so I killed them and brought the inquisition to their holy city...good times.

generally I like it so far.

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I think this may speak to some of the people who are having problems with spies stealing their techs so easy. IIRC, the chance of stealing tech is influenced by how much science that city produces. So...

If you have a city that produced 50%+ of your science, than your going to have a bad time.

I've been keeping one of my own spies stationed in my biggest research city (read: my capitol), and that seems to work pretty well for me. In conjunction with anti-espionage buildings, I've caught quite a few enemy spies, and haven't had nearly as much trouble with AIs stealing my techs as some others seem to have had.

Here is my experience in my first (and current) game of G&K. I chose Byzantine because I wanted to play around with religion, standard pace, standard size, prince difficulty, random map (it appears to be continents).

As of now, I'm approaching the end of the Renaissance era in tech, and I'm first place in score, with double that of the civ below me. I'm not really a grandmaster civ player, and I'm playing this game pretty much on autopilot. I automate my workers and explorers, and I just don't have any particular strategy in tech other than taking what seems to be a good choice at the time. So either this expansion makes things a bit easier, or I simply had a very good start. I suspect it might be a mix of both.

I share a continent with Siam and Inca. They didn't expand very fast and pretty much let me grab all the best land. They both asked me not to settle near them in the future after I pretty much took the only spot TO settle near them, so I ready agreed to their request both times. Inca and I are BFFs, and my relations with Siam have been chilled through the game to the point now where we have both denounced each other. This probably is mostly because early on I stacked up a military outside their territory and extorted most of their gold. They have a long memory over this incident.

For my civics path, I went down tradition (wanted to try a tall empire), and then piety (since I was way ahead in the religious game it seemed appropriate, and now I'm going down commerce (gold seems nice). I have 4 cities build up very well, and I'm currently building up a fifth that conveniently had two new luxuries near it, but is on the other side of the continent between Inca and Siam. If either of them had built there, they probably would have been fighting with each other over it.

I founded a religion well before the others, since I had focused on it fairly early, plus I found a ruins which gave me a +60 faith boost. I chose Christianity, with fertility rights (+10% growth), tithe (+1 gold for every 4 followers), feed the world (+1 food for every temple and shrine in a city of that religion), religious texts (Religion spreads 34% faster (68% with Printing Press)) and Religious Unity (Religion spreads to friendly city-states at double rate). My religion dominates my continent, and I'm currently sending missionaries to spread it around elsewhere. The gold bonus from having so many followers is nice, and the city states that take the religion are easier to hold relations with. Siam founded Buddhism fairly recently, but it's having a tough time taking off because all of their cities are already following my own religion.

I'm considering pursuing either a cultural or diplomatic victory. Diplomatic will mean I'd probably go down patronage next, but since Alexander is in the game, I might have to take him out of the equation. Other than Siam, I get along with the other civs very well. As I said, me and Inca are BFFs, and I've discovered and opened embassies and trade with Sweden, Carthage, Netherlands, Greece and Songhai. A few of them have asked me to get involved in their squabbles, but I've declined, but since Greece seems to be a target, I'll consider dogpiling on him in the future if I decide to take him out.

Cultural is a solid option because I dominate the wonder race and have a fairly small empire. I have about 90-95% of the currently built wonders, and my capital is a wonder building powerhouse. I also get quite a bit of culture from the holy sites I've been building with my spare prophets.

If neither of those victories pan out, science is always an option, since I'm so ahead of the other civs. I don't want to get too cheeky though, because espionage is giving the others a chance to catch up. Constantinople seems to be a prime target for everyone's spies (it has 5 star potential), and my own spy has quickly built himself up to special agent by killing them off. The best use of espionage in my situation appears to be to protect my own assets.

In the near term, I'm exploring outside my continent, shipping missionaries overseas to seed my religion on other continents, and building up my military with the plan to puppet Siam for their jerkiness, and to stamp out the Buddhist menace.

Having a lot of fun, and I'm annoyed that having to work is getting in the way of playing.

First game I am playing as the Celts on a Small/Shuffle map. Playing at Prince to get the feel of the new stuff. Seems to be Continents/Wet/Hot as almost every tile is either forest or jungle. My settler started on a hill with adjacent river, mountain, coast and forest. Pretty much awesome. Sent out my first scout and found Uluru about 8 tiles away from my capital. I took the Pantheon belief that gives 4 extra faith for each natural wonder so when I placed my second city next to Uluru that one tile was giving me 2 and 10 !

Only neighbor on my continent is Inca and I placed my third city to keep him bottled up in his corner. Despite this he is very friendly, we have DOF and he does not seem to be building any military units so I don't think a backstab is coming. Two other city states on the continent and I am allied with both of them, one culture and one mercantile.

Only problem is, I have had serious issues with crashing. I play mostly on about a 5 year old laptop so I have always had issues with this but it is much worse since the patch and expansion. Before the game would almost always crash as soon as I got an achievement popup. Now it does that and also crashes again when I try to reload. It gets through the loading screen but as soon as it gets to the copyright notice screen it crashes. I have changed the config.ini and that made it better but I still get a crash about 8/10 times.

Very frustrating because I just founded my first religion last night which caused it to crash and I have not been able to get the game running since then.

Cel.erity said:

First impressions, I really love the expansion. Most of my praises have been voiced already, so let me just share my actual game experience.

I wanted to play around with the new features, but unlike most people here, I experimented with something a little bit different: militaristic CSes. I figured I'd do something crazy, so I went on Immortal, picked Sweden, and allied with two nearby CSes as soon as I could. One of them had the gift of Mohawk Warriors, so I went Iron Working, and ended up with a pretty reasonable 3 city/6 sword rush timing plus a couple of Mohawks to make it more effective.

Unfortunately...sword rushes kind of suck now. Learned that the hard way. But despite that, my gifts kept kicking in, and eventually I was able to overtake my neighbor after just building a couple of catapults to support. I allied a 3rd militaristic CS. The gifts kept rolling all game, and they were actually good! I never had to spend any hammers on units, I got way more than I needed, so I was able to construct all the key buildings in my cities as well as go for some wonders that wouldn't be possible under a traditional domination strat. I even supplemented this with a ton of faith and spread my religion like crazy. Eventually won the game easily on turn ~240 with an army full of gifted units.

Now, I'm not saying this is an amazing strat, but the fact that it was even possible on Immortal makes me giddy. Things in the game that should reward you actually do feel rewarding, which is awesome, and the pacing is spot on. Also can't tell you how much fun it is to march across the map with an army of trebuchets, longswords, legions, and mohawk warriors (Elephants and Janissaries came later). As Sweden.

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Oh yes, can someone explain this to me... I have to read the manual still so please tell me if this is in there but I made an ally of a militaristic civ and he has gifted me 4 camel archers (which now also have 4 movement so are now much more powerful). I am kind of surprised how reliant he is in giving me the same unique unit. Was this an update - to make militaristic city states be more likely to give specific unique units?