RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

pi-r8 said:

Well sure, we would have lost losing units at 5:1. The deity AIs can produce 5 times as many units, and we were at war with three of them at the same time! But I don't see how that changes the fact that the economy/building part of this game is so broken. If we hadn't taken advantage of the broken economy features, the AI would have had a lot more than 5 times as many units.

I don't see how you can say it's "a fine game" when the best building strategy is to ignore 90% of the buildings in the game.

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Assume, for a moment, that we had an AI that was sufficiently adept with tactical movement that you could, at best, achieve a 5:1 kill ratio. All other Deity bonuses are left unchanged.

Against such an AI, you would definitely need to turtle, and turtle hard, at certain points in the game. There wasn't really a point during RB3 when you needed to do this. Some of the tactical situations were certainly dicey, but you were still able to maintain relatively steady expansion until the end.

Instead, you would be more reliant on Barracks/Walls/Castles/Forges/Heroic Epic/etc to hold your ground. Oligarchy and the Honor tree look much more enticing. Instead of building settlers, you have fewer cities with larger populations. Libraries/Universities/PSchools would give a better return for the investment. Capturing a city from the AI becomes a much more expensive undertaking, and you need a strong reason (like a Wonder) to attempt it.

It also means that some starts, like the RB3 one, would probably be unwinnable. Combined with tougher building choices, that would make me happy.

Nutteria said:

In the end the compromise should be something like - Keep the fast healing but make the penalty bigger

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At the very least, units insta-healing should be forced to "sit out" a turn, like they would when they are upgraded.

Paeanblack said:

Assume, for a moment, that we had an AI that was sufficiently adept with tactical movement that you could, at best, achieve a 5:1 kill ratio. All other Deity bonuses are left unchanged.

Against such an AI, you would definitely need to turtle, and turtle hard, at certain points in the game. There wasn't really a point during RB3 when you needed to do this. Some of the tactical situations were certainly dicey, but you were still able to maintain relatively steady expansion until the end.

Instead, you would be more reliant on Barracks/Walls/Castles/Forges/Heroic Epic/etc to hold your ground. Oligarchy and the Honor tree look much more enticing. Instead of building settlers, you have fewer cities with larger populations. Libraries/Universities/PSchools would give a better return for the investment. Capturing a city from the AI becomes a much more expensive undertaking, and you need a strong reason (like a Wonder) to attempt it.

It also means that some starts, like the RB3 one, would probably be unwinnable. Combined with tougher building choices, that would make me happy.

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You're assuming that turtling would help, against such an AI. It wouldn't. We were already in defense mode for a while in the middle, and you can see how knights + catapults were the main defense. If we were losing a unit for every 5 we killed, we would have been quickly overwhelmed. Building walls, and castles, forges, etc would have just wasted precious resources that would be needed for building replacement units. Halting expansion would have led to being out-teched and out-produced later on.

Honor and oligarchy would be good, sure. It already is. Probably the easiest way to win this game is to steamroll right from the beginning with horsemen and honor. If the AI suddenly became a lot tougher, I guess that would be the only option, but it wouldn't make for a fun or well balanced game.

Tarkeel said:

@Sullla: You might want to update the first post with links to the rest:
Turns 0-20: Find the first foe
Turns 20-40: My Little Pony
Turns 40-55: The first war
Turns 55-69: War and Peace and War again
Turns 69-85: Two-front war

Turns 85-97: Making peace, featuring free gold and research-tweaking
Turns 97-110: Nobody expects the French Inquisition
Turns 110-115 (SevenSpirits): War weariness
Turns 115-125 (alpaca): Holding ground
Turns 125-135 (uberfish): Nothing really happened today

Turns 135-145 (Sullla): Still not much happening
Turns 145-155 (luddite): Treading water
Turns 155-165 (alpaca): Turning the tide
Turns 165-178 (uberfish): Fall of France

Turns 178-191 (Sullla): The first offensive war
Turns 191-203 (luddite): Fall of the Aztec
Turns 203-210 (alpaca): The End



Napoloeon seems to be THE biggest warmonger around in Civ V; my last Deity-attempt ended early when he came knocking with 2 warriors and 2 charriots on turn 33..

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Thought this was great!

Thanks Sulla, alpaca , luddite and SevenSpirits for the very interesting read, I learnt a lot from the SG. It must take a lot of time to do these games and it is much appreciated by the community (maybe not by my boss at work though ..teehee!)

CiV makes me sad though.. i want to love it but...

There are many things about it i think are great, or that I can at least see what they were going for: The music and visuals definetly feel right, i like the culture system and the way cities tiles expand. It makes the borders look really organic. And i do like negotiating the whole 1upt thing...especially with the ranged attack thing. Being able to embark units across water is cool.. And the city states ... well i think they are a good idea and will be great if they get tweaked a little...

but...I HATE that my workers have nothing to do . Rush buying everything is not a challenge...I don't get the AI at all.. I feel like they have lost all their personality that they used to have in civ IV. Now they are all just warmongers. They do stupid things all the time - like the moment you take a city they will ignore all the units around it (including wounded units) and just take the city back again, only to lose it the turn after (including the unit they took it back with)!! And what was with Monty (think it was Monty) moving one of his units iinto the water! When i saw that i just thought "Oh no... poor ciV" .

I'm by no means an expert player i have never beaten diety level.. but I've been finding as I play ciV that i keep thinking about civ IV and how great it was. I'm pretty sure thats not what Firaxis were going for though when they made this game.

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Personally I like playing with 25 HP since I think units are just to fragile as it is now. This helps against cavalry since they can't kill off units as easily.

Sulla, et. al.,

You guys have any plans to replay your succession game after the major patch due out this week? Would love to see the comparison.

It's shocking how many changes in the patch there are to "address" the ICS strategy...its almost as if this game got under their skin. Whether the changes make for a more fun and balanced game is an open question. It would be great to see some world class players try the game on deity post-patch.

Bubba, I know I can't speak for the players, but from sampling the vibe over at Realms Beyond with this thread (read the last few pages) I cannot see this game being replayed.

Brian,

Thanks for the link, the thread was interesting reading. Sullla seems down on the patch changes (for good reasons).

Playing a test game now. The ICS strategy is still working fine (combined with trading post spamming). Essentially the same strategy that was used in the succession game. Way ahead in techs, making large amounts of gold/turn. I'm still choosing the liberty social tree, I'm just making all my settlers in my capital! Meritocracy still helps with happiness. Luxuries, coliseums and circuses still suffice for the rest.

What I haven't tested yet is combat (no major wars yet). If the AI hasn't gotten better, then it will remain no fun. But I really feel like it takes world class players (which I am not) to properly test that.

Thanks to all the readers who took this thread to 100,000 views - that's a lot!

To answer BubbaYeti's question, I have no real interest in playing another one of these games, patch or no patch. I didn't see anything in the patch to change my opinion of Civ5. Better, yes, but still a game with very serious problems, and not one I'm particularly interesting in playing further. I will probably try to poke around a little bit to see how things changed, and write up a few quick impressions on my website.

Nothing is stopping the rest of you from trying another game like this, of course. Except for the fact that this is practically a dead forum, which makes me very sad indeed. I miss the vibrant Civ3/Civ4 succession game community.

You're just giving up? Vanilla will be never be fixed, but most of the mods have got the game challenging on difficulties as low as emperor, and the gameplay in them varies actually rather than just being units spam. Admittedly mods will be broken for about a week due to the patch, though, so you'll have to wait a bit.

Sullla said:

I miss the vibrant Civ3/Civ4 succession game community.

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The mod CCM is getting quite a bit of playtime in Civ III forum. It is not the standard Civ III game; invisible units, no Armies and culture-bombing (and yes, this is Civ III). ICS is not an option in this mod; you cannot build any settlers until the Industrial Age; instead they are auto-produced every 20 turns (for you and the AI). Same limitation on workers, too, but not quite as severe.

There is an AW SG going on now (Monarch, Rome). Feel free to come and lurk.

I'm sorry about the downturn in community activity, Sullla.

I've been a big fan of yours ever since your first CIV IV entry, and I feel horrendous that the (major) flaws in CIV V are keeping you from trying to maintain the community...

Well, the downturn probably has more to do with everyone predicting all the saves being screwed up by the coming patch (and they did )

I don't think it's only the save game incompatibility with the new patch. We also had several issues that different versions of the game aren't compatible and with more DLC thrown in, I don't expect that to get better.

Apart from technical issues, the game doesn't offer that much for a vibrant succession game forum. I think the game appeals much more to those casual gamers that have fun with elements of the game that just don't excite the serious strategic players.

After playing a few games post-patch, I am with Sullla on this...I don't see enough of an improvement to make civ v worth playing further. Maybe there will be some super mods in the future, but for now it has been uninstalled. Maybe I'll go back and find a good civ iv mod to fool around with.

In other news, Jon Shafer has apparently "left" (been fired by?) Firaxis.

Why is everyone treating Sulla like a celebrity who was made to act in a B grade movie. Then I guess seven spirits got a drug addiction and died. It would be quite amusing if Sulla was actually Sarah Palin in real life.

Moderator Action: I suggest you read the rules regarding what you can and cannot post. The above is a prime example of what you cannot post.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Fanatic Zealot said:

Why is everyone treating Sulla like a celebrity who was made to act in a B grade movie. Then I guess seven spirits got a drug addiction and died. It would be quite amusing if Sulla was actually Sarah Palin in real life.

Moderator Action: I suggest you read the rules regarding what you can and cannot post. The above is a prime example of what you cannot post.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

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We are not treating Sullla as some sort of sleb who should be worshipped from on high. We recognise him as a strong player, who has experience in the games industry (as a tester for a number of Firaxis games) and who can properly enunciate his point of view. Most people, even if they think he is wrong, will respond in a positive manner to Sullla's musings, because a) he writes coherently (if sometimes with a few mistakes) and b) he always backs up his arguements with logical reasoning and evidence.

This means that he is someone who gets a lot of attention, because a lot of people do look to people like him when they want to get opinions on a new game they're thinking of buying, they're trying to articulate their own impressions, or they want to argue the opposite (as he does always include lots of things which can be used in an arguement).

On the other hand a person like you will get little to no attention, aside from the obvious statements of "shut up", because you do not build an arguement, just shout at the top of your voice in an obnoxious manner.