RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

Yeah, I really hope that's not true. Before the patch, trading resources and signing research agreements were essentially the only things that you could actually do diplomatically with the AIs. (Remember, no tech trades, no map trades in this game.) Slapping down the player and making it harder to trade for resources is definitely not the way to go, as it's just going to push this game even further in the direction of "Player versus the World."

I have no opinions on patching, and haven't logged into Civ5 or turned on Steam since I played my turnset. Not much Civ5 on my computer at the moment, kind of moved on to other things.
 
lurker's comment:

People are seeing a minimum of 2 of your happiness resources for 1 of the computer's, or a maximum of 150 gold at standard speed.

AI will never take biased deals, so now they will never trade with each other. They also do everything to stay happy. This means more happy buildings, more maintenance and less hammers/gold for units. I think they might have just weakened the AI.
 
It could be they added a "do I need this?" modifier to AI trades, couldn't it? 300 gold for a resource that most of the time wasn't actually useful for them was way overpaid.
 
OK, taken a look. Goals will be:

- Play defense militarily.
- Continue settling on the grid in the north, and making libraries/colosseums.
- Aim to get a couple more great scientists up.
- Techwise, go for Banking, then start on the path to Dynamite.
- Start Forbidden Palace.

A couple things I'd like opinions on:

- Use the great scientist that we have now to grab banking (and thus, the Renaissance) 8 turns earlier? Or save it for the military beeline?
- Policies: I've heard arguments for Secularism over Freedom because we don't have many specialists yet, but I don't think they make sense. Both policies give benefits directly in proportion to the number of specialists you have. Either one is better, or the other; which is it? (Do we prefer 1 happy, or 4 science points? I would think we prefer the happy (which is worth 1 science, 1.25 gold, and a tile) but I'm not sure.) I guess another possibility is going farther down Rationalism too, and ignoring Freedom, but I don't think that's good.
 
I think if you use the great scientist to grab banking, and use the rationalism golden age to start building the forbidden palace, we'll get it soon enough that we won't have to worry about happiness for a while. We're OK just buying coloseums until then. That's why I think we should get Secularism before Freedom.

Do you have the patch? I haven't updated yet.
 
I think if you use the great scientist to grab banking, and use the rationalism golden age to start building the forbidden palace, we'll get it soon enough that we won't have to worry about happiness for a while. We're OK just buying coloseums until then. That's why I think we should get Secularism before Freedom.

Do you have the patch? I haven't updated yet.

Hm, that is a reasonable argument. On the other hand, we do have great capacity to use happiness, particularly since entering the Renaissance gives us another 2 free maritime food per city.

I have the patch installed.
 
Lurker's comment :

Lurker question:
Does T99 comment mean there are know cost associated with roads?


Is it me, or has Civ5 going backwards and create more MM then ever?


I started reading these threads to see if I could get back some exciment for Civ, but to be honest it is a depressing read. I don't recall with 3 or 4 seeing to many complaints.

Roads cost 1 gpt, railroads cost 2 gpt.
The beaker overflow waste is one of the most annoying MM in the game.

Try civ 5 and you'll be cured for the rest of your life.
 
Hm, that is a reasonable argument. On the other hand, we do have great capacity to use happiness, particularly since entering the Renaissance gives us another 2 free maritime food per city.

I have the patch installed.

The argument is rather that something like 10 science is at this point worth more than 2.5 happiness. There are also other sources of happiness available (cols). It doesn't matter much either way, we should get the third policy just 10 turns or so down the road.

I agree with bulbing Banking, it gives us some 7 turns extra science and finishes the FP a bit earlier.

We'll play with the patch then, I'd say, because there's no way to roll back on steam
 
Lurker:

I've played a patched Emperor / Standard / Pangaea with Wu, and I've rec'd over 200 gold for resources (but no 300 yet). So yes, apparently the trades have been reduced. Can you still cap at 300 with a good trade partner? Maybe. I have noticed that there does seem to be a much larger variation in the "rates" between the different AI. Whereas before I'd get either 300 or 225 or 180, now I've seen things like 230 and 174 and 166 / 145. Erm. There was a bit of that before. But the std. deviation seems greater.

HTH
J
 
The argument is rather that something like 10 science is at this point worth more than 2.5 happiness. There are also other sources of happiness available (cols). It doesn't matter much either way, we should get the third policy just 10 turns or so down the road.

I agree with bulbing Banking, it gives us some 7 turns extra science and finishes the FP a bit earlier.

We'll play with the patch then, I'd say, because there's no way to roll back on steam

Sounds good. I'll assess the situation after bulbing and take what looks like the better policy. I'm busy still for the next several hours but will play tonight.
 
T110: I get acquainted with where everything is. Holy crap, managing all those units and tiles is a pain with this many of them. By the way, the patch made it so that the production focus governor is willing to starve your cities. WTF? This means there is no good (and safe) governor option anymore for many cities. (Most of ours are fine, luckily, because of the maritime food and not enough zero-food tiles.)

T111: Siam (+ Almaty, it’s ally) declares war on Egypt! In the same turn, France becomes the new ally of Almaty, so they are now at war with us too. Not sure exactly what happened there.

T112: France declares war on Egypt! I wonder how much of this is due to the patch.

T113: Siam declares war on us! Due to their absurdly powerful ability to have open borders with us after the deal is over, we lose a catapult immediately. We are seeing one war declaration a turn so far. o_O

Anyone remember before Civ V was announced how proud they were of the AI being sneaky? “Sometimes, the AI will propose a research pact with you, and then ATTACK YOU right after!!” It was in every single presentation they made. I’m currently in my third stage of disbelief:
1) OMG, I can’t believe they think that is actually a smart move. It sounds ridiculously dumb on the AI’s part.
2) Oh it IS a smart move. Because you get the free tech when war is declared. Um... given that multiple people associated with the game claimed the AI had done this to them, how did they not notice this bug??
3) Siam declares war on literally half a turn before the research pact would have happened. SURPRISE! :D

Anyway I kill some units.

T114: I continue killing units.

T115: Montezuma declares war on us. He has had Helsinki completely walled in (unreachable) for a few turns and now moves in and kills all their units. I do more killing, too.

Guys, I am sorry about this, but I can't play any more. It's so boring that I'm actually close to tears. It's a combination of the bad interface, having to order every single unit individually, being unable to effectively queue any commands, having to hover over tiles to check if they have roads because the trading post graphics look like someone ate all the extra roads you are not supposed to build and then puked them out, having to kill so many freaking AI units, building the same 3 things in every city, and the city governors not working well on their own.

I played as much as I could, but these 5 turns have taken 2 hours already (not sure how much of that is just spacing out because it's more interesting), and it was unfun the whole time. I'm really sorry. I won't play any more turns in this game; it's just not worth my sanity. :(

Here is the western front (new!):


Losing Helsinki is unavoidable in the short term. We're going to have to protect Genoa and make due with only one maritime CS for now.

The east (pretty much quiet):


And the south:

Defending Genoa is pretty irritating as it's completely separated from us by a line of rough terrain, And there's even more rough tiles right next to it. I only just cleared out the area around Neapolis and got a horse onto one of the hills to see what's on the other side, so we can start sending troops to Genoa.

I pulled back some of our horses to the west to fight Montezuma, but hopefully left enough for the southern conflict. We have a general to help down there too.

We became unhappy again this turn; I have not re-microed our cities for this. Next turn we get education, bulb banking, and take some policies.

As I don't know how the patch affected deluxe replays, I've uploaded the original and a converted one.
 
:eek:

So we have three mortal enemies now...

I was able to open the unconverted save. So, got it.
 
Well I'm not surprised at all by the Siam/Aztec war decs, the only war we really have a right to complain about is the one with France. I hope we're prepared enough. I suspect that taking Cumae was the flash point that caused Napoleon to attack us, the AI probably doesn't understand the concept of a the geography acting as a natural border and just goes "hey it's an isolated city close to me, I'll take it"
 
Lurker:

Considering the amount of unknown terrain around, it might be useful to ship-scout.
 
Turn 115

My favourite exercise: Looping through all our cities to take off scientists I don't want to keep for GS generation in order to avoid beaker waste as much as possible. We also should have spent two turns a while ago to research sailing and optics because now we can't scale down our research enough to not waste a lot of beakers when we research them. I will do that when we hit the Renaissance.

I look at the field and notice an Egyptian settler to the south. Since we have eternal open borders with Egypt (that's why I never accept open borders unless I really need them to go through my land) he could move somewhere in-between our cities and then Ramesses will probably attack us because we settled close to him. However there are no really good spots available so I hope he'll go somewhere else.

When talking to him Napoleon says "The time has come to put down our arms" but when asked to define on what terms he says that no such deal is possible. Monty has a lot of spears but spears are usually dead meat against knights. Let's hope he doesn't upgrade them to pikes.



More concerning is Ram with his phantomphants. The river is a great asset there, though. I would really like to buy a catapult in Neapolis to destroy Ram but it's a puppet and even though there's a view city option now, it doesn't allow me to do that. Our next city is Edirne so I buy one there and move the one from Cumae to the east. If Napoleon attacks we'll have a turn or two of warning. I also shift a knight to Japan as one of those elephants can take down a city of ours with little trouble.


Turn 116

I notice Monty has Longswordsmen. These are a bit more troubling. Looks like Helsinki will fall in a turn or two. I was able to threaten away Ram from Genoa.



Education is finished so I bulb Banking. I will let Istanbul finish it's Catapult, research Sailing and then go for Secularism.



I think I identified the spot where Ramesses' settler is heading. He's already hostile so he won't react well to me telling him off, though. I really hate the open borders bug.

With no good tactical options available against Siam I go for a bit of hit and run, take out the pike and the archer and retreat from the elephant which has +50% against my knights.


Turn 117

Helsinki is still alive but barely so. France moves on Monaco and a catapult towards Cumae which I plan take out with an old horseman. Ram retreated behing our border river for the time being so I will also move the catapult back. We now have two catapults in Istanbul, one of which will be positioned behind the river. Together, they will wipe out Monty's spearman army. The catapult I bought moves further south to guard against Elephants.



Sailing is finished within the turn. Istanbul starts on the Forbidden Palace. I take Secularism, ETA for the next policy is 13 turns and for the FP 25ish (20 in the golden age, 27 before it). I really want Machinery to upgrade my archers and Physics to upgrade my Trebs. Nevertheless, I have a GA now and want to keep my citizens working tiles instead of spending their days in the library so I pick up Optics to avoid beaker wastage. I'll also buy a Colosseum in Istanbul because we're unhappy.

Napoleon just wants 52 gold per turn and two luxuries for peace. Nice but no, thanks.


Turn 118

Montezuma entered the Renaissance. His riflemen are likely close so let's hope he wastes his spears before he can upgrade them to deadly +100% against mounted unit riflemen.



Tokyo finishes another Colosseum, Kyoto is due in 1 turn. This will provide us with a bit of a happiness buffer for expansion. Since the zone of control mechanic is so utterly weak in this game, this knight can attack the archer and still retreat to safety. This weak ZoC is, by the way, the second reason why formations and such are useless - the first is the -33% bonus for defending on open ground.

Napoleon had the good grace to move his catapult even closer to my horseman to save him a bit of time. I think the reason why the AI so often pulls off crap like this is because they define a target area for their units and then auto-move them there with utter disregard for enemy positions. This is a very good explanation for the archer screw-up of Oda in my first turnset, too. The obvious exploit here is to take cities in likely paths of units, which will totally screw up the AI.

Helsinki is still completely surrounded but wasn't attacked much last turn. I finish Optics and will now research Engineering, then Machinery. Engineering should arrive in two turns. Edirne is re-styled as a production city (I really need at least one city putting out units) and is consequently granted some more food allotment.



I move down a worker to build some strategic roads in the stretch of hills on our border with Siam. When moving on roads, catapults can move a tile, set up and shoot.


Turn 119

Ram offers peace for just... well, half of our cities. At least he's willing to talk, right? Napoleon seems on the move so I might want to bolster Monaco's defenses a bit. Our peace treaty with Alex is over, costing us two luxuries.



Three settlers are finished this turn, which I decide to send to strategically useful positions (one against Monty, two against Ram). Neapolis is just building crap so I'll start to raze it next turn and re-settle better spots.

MLP starts on a Cat, the other two cities will continue churning out settlers.


Turn 120

Helsinki is dead. This does cost us incense and puts us at unhappy, so I might as well raze Neapolis now. The production governor starts starving our cities, which is annoying because I have to manually re-assign the tiles to prevent that. I start researching Machinery, ETA turn 122.




Turn 121

Montezuma offers us a lot of money for peace. Looks like he just wanted Helsinki. I'm thinking but we need the second Maritime ally, so let me free them first. Nappy also asks for peace but still wants a lot of money, which I'm not willing to give him just yet.



Alex might be preparing another attack on us. I'll put a Knight on garrison detail just to be safe.

Diyarbakir is founded to the north-west of Istanbul and immediately starts pounding Montezuma. Aggressive settling is one of my favourite pastimes during war-time.


Turn 122

The golden age is over, the FP is at 22 turns.

I miscalculate how much damage I can do to that Elephant, which leaves one of the cats open to attack. I don't think he got an insta-heal, though, so he might decide it safer to retreat. Since we have enough workers anyways, I offer one to Ram to maybe distract the elephant.




Turn 123

Unfortunately, Ram doesn't take the bait and takes out a catapult. The elephant is dead now but the cost was considerable. I settle Izmir to the south.



Since France is coming, I buy another cat in Istanbul to defend Constantinople. I will upgrade the archer there to a crossbowman in the next turn.

Here's what our economy looks like





The demographics tell me that Ramkhamhaeng is really pushing the envelope. He's going strong, real strong. The second in place is probably Nappy. Our own numbers suffer a bit from the constant warfare on multiple fronts. I see that Monty has Musketmen now and only offers a white peace. I should probably have accepted his offer a few turns earlier.

Machinery is finished, I will go for Metal Casting now, to be finished in two turns.


Turn 124

I kill a Siamese Pikeman and two archers, which nets me a new Great General. This is nice, I need some help against Monty/Nappy in the west. It would be possible to spend him on a golden age to speed the FP by another turn or two but I don't think it's worth it.


Turn 125

Metal Casting is finished. I click on Physics. We have a lot of catas so Trebs will be extra nice. Should be done in three turns. Napoleon and Monty are converging on Brussels but I can't do anything much to help them without spreading our forces dangerously thin. Ramesses founded Akhetaten in the most annoying of places and with no reason to pull him there, either.



Our empire is pretty much the same as when I took over. We can't expand a lot due to the high military demands on our treasury. Due to settling a few more of our own cities, the next policy will only become available in 11 or 12 turns.


Some notes for uberfish:

I wanted to found a city on the spices near Neapolis but Akhetaten makes that impossible. You might want to settle it where Neapolis is instead. The next wave should probably wait until we get some happiness from Freedom.



Brussels is totally surrounded by both Monty and Nappy. They both have Musketmen/Musketeers now so we might want to sign a white peace with Monty but that is up to discussion. I should have taken the deal where he offered me 1500 gold for peace in turn 122 or whenever that was :(



Peacing out with Monty would free some of our units to the north to move towards Siam or France. We need some serious defense against Napoleon's Musketeers.



Siam looks a bit toothless from our side at the moment, he seems to want Genoa but doesn't actually have enough to take it, especially if you manage to take out that elephant before it can instant heal.



MLP and Ayshe's Vineyard are on GS duty. Seeing our tech rate compared to spawn rate at the moment it looks like we'll only have one for Dynamite, though, and hard-research the rest. I think we want Chemistry before Metallurgy and Rifling because the Janissaries are quite good and we can upgrade our siege army to Cannons while we can only build lancers. I kept a bit of money in the treasury, enough to buy a unit somewhere when we hit Gunpowder, but you might want to add a little to that to buy two.
 

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lurkers comment:

I can feel your pain SevenSpirits. What you described simply isn't fun.

As for the game, I can see that Genoa has mountains on three of its neighbouring tiles. Now I am not sure how the AI works post-patch, but I have often seen it stall attacking a city-state when it only has two or three tiles to attack from. If you are lucky Siam might even move an archer close to it removing one tile. If this happens you could concentrate your forces in the west to deal with the ridiculous ammount of (outdated) troops the Aztecs seem to be sending your way.
 
Hmm. I guess we had a protection deal going with Helsinki then? You could have taken Monty's money and used it to pay off Napoleon I suppose, I can't criticize the decision to try and get Helsinki back though. Without the tech-trading menu from civ4 and with Aztec never showing up as top or bottom demographically, no way to tell where they are at in tech.
 
Wow I don't even know what to say. I know exactly how SevenSpirits feels- I often look at a big battle and think "OK I'm sure I could win this, I just don't really want to". It's really stressful and not fun, especially when making just one little slip can be so devastating. You guys handled it well though. We haven't lost any units and Monty is already offering peace.

Alpaca- when the AI wants to negotiate peace but says they can't make a reasonable deal, that means they're only willing to take peace if you offer them a LOT of cities.

I'm sort of hoping that this war gets finished before it comes around to me again, because I'm really not looking forward to all that micromanagement. At least we've got trebuchets coming in soon, and cannons pretty soon after that. I think we'll be safe, it'll just be a lot of grinding.
 
Lurkers Comment:

Does the 62 patch mean that neither party gets the tech from an RA, if war is declared? I would think the side that declare would lose theirs, but the attacked side did not break the deal. They should gets something back, either the tech or the investment.
 
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