First Impressions

Ok got to play finally!! Played as Celts/Huge/Marathon/Prince. Basicly to to look at religion only. The Celts get that + 1 forest or +2 if 3. I started at +1. You would think I would found pantheon 1st, not so at all!!! Was 6th, the AI's nabbed some goodie huts for faith!!! Now, I used to do the NC rush because of the boost to tech, not really viable anymore. Not sure how you all's games went, but the AI is really insane with troops now. I mean real crazy, I normally do a 7 archers and 2 off units for 3 cities. This will normally let be bewtween 1 and 3, well I was # 8!! So this was pretty cool to me, if you do not build troops early, you will die.

I will want to mess more with religion, but so far it look well done to me, nothing really over powering.

It also looks to me like you will now have 4 real choices to go. And if you go for religion, you will fall behind on tech. If you got for tech, you will fall behind on Religion. Same for commerce or war footing. It will not be easy to try all 4.

The diplomacy seems much better now, i met 7 out 11 AI's so far, not one DoW 10 turns after meeting me!! Looks like peacful builder option could be back!!

All in all so far having a blast, this expansion is pretty cool. Also, someone said there were a lot more resources on the maps now? Not so for me, they were spread out far and wide.

Now that I have had a chance to play the game for a longer period of time, I must say it is simply amazing. I started a pretty much standard game on prince with all of the new civs as my rivals. Attila and I had a lone iron tile between us, as soon as I had settled the land and began work to improve it, he attacked and defeated all of my units. I consider this to be a very intelligent move on the part of the AI. Had I been able to upgrade my units to legions, it would have made things a lot harder for the Huns.

I started another game on the same settings as the previous one. Since I started next to a massive patch of jungle, I adopted the sacred path (I think that's what's it's called) for +1 culture for every jungle tile. This helped to facilitate a huge leap forward in adopting social policies. I had them built monuments by means of adopted legal system, which gave me a great culture boost.

The Celts had attacked my Ethiopian neighbors, and had inflicted a lot of damage on them. However, they had refrained from finishing them off. I however had just finished building a massive army which was marching towards their capital. I made short work of them, and had last saved the game in a very interest spot. I have the Celts to my north, and the Mayans to my south. I think when I get home today, I will conquer the Mayans first, and then focus on the Celts afterwards.

I'm still getting used to the new combat system. I do in fact like it, I just need to become more familiar with it.

Gucumatz said:

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?

Click to expand...

So in the City-State screen (could be mousing over, can't remember), if you are allied (maybe if you aren't), the city-state will tell you what type of units it has and tell you to research its corresponding tech to get that unit. If you have the tech discovered, it will gift you the unit (a UU of a civ that isn't in the current game). If you haven't discovered the tech, it will gift you a random unit.

Not sure about once you tech to the next era past that UU, haven't seen it yet.

Randall_Flagg said:

Ok got to play finally!! Played as Celts/Huge/Marathon/Prince. Basicly to to look at religion only. The Celts get that + 1 forest or +2 if 3. I started at +1. You would think I would found pantheon 1st, not so at all!!! Was 6th, the AI's nabbed some goodie huts for faith!!! Now, I used to do the NC rush because of the boost to tech, not really viable anymore. Not sure how you all's games went, but the AI is really insane with troops now. I mean real crazy, I normally do a 7 archers and 2 off units for 3 cities. This will normally let be bewtween 1 and 3, well I was # 8!! So this was pretty cool to me, if you do not build troops early, you will die.

I will want to mess more with religion, but so far it look well done to me, nothing really over powering.

It also looks to me like you will now have 4 real choices to go. And if you go for religion, you will fall behind on tech. If you got for tech, you will fall behind on Religion. Same for commerce or war footing. It will not be easy to try all 4.

The diplomacy seems much better now, i met 7 out 11 AI's so far, not one DoW 10 turns after meeting me!! Looks like peacful builder option could be back!!

All in all so far having a blast, this expansion is pretty cool. Also, someone said there were a lot more resources on the maps now? Not so for me, they were spread out far and wide.

Click to expand...

I've noticed that too with troops. Now, I don't think I would feel comfortable attacking someone with less than 8-10 troops by turn 75, maybe even earlier.

I think it is a good thing that iron is no longer required for siege weapons.

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).

Click to expand...

Well, I maybe a bit biased, considering I founded a religion that only CSs and a Japanese city followed. The rest of his nation was Shinto. So, he was always angry towards me. Rome, however, was a backstabber. But, it was obvious that he was up to no good.

It seems that the AI still back stabs, but it is much more intentional, and not an AI error.

But in all honesty I have quite a few friendly civs to me. I've only gone to war with two nations my whole game.

Take note: AI civs are MUCH more likely to join you in the "we should declare war against..." requests. This happened to me twice. Both times, however, they required ten turns. One of those times I backed out (because Rome was at my door), but the nation we were going to go to war against declared war on me anyways.

PhilBowles said:

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).

Click to expand...

This is notifying you that your promise has been successfully completed, so you are able to start expanding again without being considered to have broken the promise.

Gucumatz said:

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?

Click to expand...

Each militaristic city state has its own unique unit (from a civ that isn't in the game) that it will gift to you if you are in the relevant tech period.

Emperor Giulio said:

I think it is a good thing that iron is no longer required for siege weapons.

Click to expand...

Also necessary given they are pretty much a prerequisite for capturing cities at that stage of the game.

stratocast85 said:

So in the City-State screen (could be mousing over, can't remember), if you are allied (maybe if you aren't), the city-state will tell you what type of units it has and tell you to research its corresponding tech to get that unit. If you have the tech discovered, it will gift you the unit (a UU of a civ that isn't in the current game). If you haven't discovered the tech, it will gift you a random unit.

Not sure about once you tech to the next era past that UU, haven't seen it yet.

Click to expand...

It gifts you era-appropriate units. Mostly I got given knights, cannons and muskets when the UUs went obsolete. Everything I got was very useful.

I like it. Played a game as Carthage last night and did not experience any lag time. I didn't see any increase in the wait between turns and enjoyed it for the the first time in a while!

Played a couple hours last night!! Celts/small/emperor. All new civs.

I REALLY LIKE the religions, they made it very very cool. I've got over 600 hours on the game so far and i see that doubling before I get done with it. I originally started with carthage but there werent any mountains so I restarted and went for the religion aspect.

I've only had one war - with Attila. I managed to hold him off with just an archer and a pict warrior, fortunately he had a circuitous route with hills and a mountain that let me bleed him pretty bad. One ram made it to my city and got a few hits in, yikes! those things hit hard!! Long story short, he was basically one attack from taking it but I held. Now hes pretty much exhausted himself. So basically I havent seen anything amazing from the AI so far but it still operates enough to make me sweat a bit.

Money has been a huge issue. I am overflowing in faith and happiness but not enough money!! Not sure whats changed here but I dont recall going bankrupt so fast before, I didnt even know about the reduced beakers from bankruptcy before, did it even work this way? Got currency and finally dug my way out.

Overall, seems like an amazing addition. I really like playing the celts, they give a unique perspective the way any good civ should (put you cities around trees), and the faith mechanic also changes my perspective depending on beliefs and what resources are nearby to give the best synergy. I really feel like I have a lot to explore here!!!!!!!!!

In my game Austria is marrying all the City States, in fact there are none left on my continent. I can take them over, but cannot liberate them. Austria is kind of like a cockroach or something. Hard to kill like a cockroach, but I am the Raid!

Diplomacy feels a lot better. You can make deals with the AI civs and they always come to remind you when the deal ends. They ask if you want to renew the deal. The AI also comes to offer resources for gold, or resources for resources from you. You can still tell if there being false friendly, when you offer a luxury to sell and they want you to give them 3 luxuries and gold, for their 1 luxury. I think they should make the AI more sneaky, by giving 240 for a resource, just to make you think they are friendly. When the deal ends then they backstab you. and all the while you thought they were friendly. Maybe it does happen this way, but I have had an ongoing war with only one civ thus far.

First Impression

For my first game I'm playing as Austria on huge continents Warlord marathon. I found myself on the banks of a mighty river just shy of the northern tundras on a medium sized, T-shaped continent. I was centered on the horizontal bar. England and Sweden were to my west, close together. Russia was immidiately to my east. I was boxed in to the south by America. Carthage was isolated at the very southern tip of the vertical bar of the T. My starting location seemed to be production-heavy with only moderate growth potential. The predominate luxury item was silk, but marble, spice, truffles, furs, and copper were also to be found. the closest coast to me was the northern coast, embraced by ice; not ideal for founding a port. I was effectively landlocked. If only there were some way for me to acquire a temperate, pre-made coastal city...

One thing I definitely have to comment on is how common happiness is and how hard to find money is in the early time period. Austria's UA is hard to use early because you hardly have enough money for it. It seems like Golden Ages are the only way to make money before Currency and Guilds. It might prove to be a good idea to beeline those techs. It's not hard to get various City-States to be an ally, but I rarely had enough money to seal the deal until...

War with America and Russia

At a point when I was in the Classical Era, Friendly America and Russia decided to double-team me. The Americans fielded about a dozen units to take one city, but no siege. The composition was largely warriors and Composite Bowmen with a few Spearmen. I defended with a warrior, a Composite Bowman, a Horseman, and a Chariot. America might have succeeded but it seemed like they lost their nerve. They surrounded my city, and I outflanked them. they fired a few arrows and then retreated.

Russia was worse. They brought only a handful of warriors and just 2 archers. I repelled them easily.

Russia sued for peace quickly, but made no reparations. America gave me over 2000 coin and 2 luxuries. Thusly enriched, several events happened to really cause my civ to take off. Cahokia, a nice coastal city-state with Porcelin(spelled wrong) had a quest where money became much more effective (Looking for Investors). I also kicked off a Golden Age in short order which gave me some more much-needed money. I spend some gold to ally with Cahokia, and a few turns later I had enough money to Marry them. Then I had my port complete with several buildings, a worker, an archer, and a warrior.

Diplomacy
Gustav Adolphus is a cranky bastard. My only negative modifier with his is that he coveted my lands, but he was guarded the whole time. He refuses to DoF me. Carthage constantly wants to be my friend. I refuse because they went to war with Sweden (to no avail). I want to be friends with Sweden.

I would like to note that England had a new positive diplomatic modifier: No border conflicts.

Another Note: America actually initiated a trade for luxury resources. I don't remember that happening before. Ever.

Religion:
Not being the Celts makes religion a reallly slow process on Marathon. I founded the second pantheon only after discovering a Faith ruin. In retrospect, I picked the wrong Pantheon Belief. I picked the river happiness one. It has made no difference thus far. Happiness is easy to come by. Sweden picked the desert faith one after I picked, and they got a religion before I did. It then took me till the late Classical period to get the 600 Faith required to maybe get a Great Prophet. It spawned pretty quickly afterward though.

I picked Papal Primacy to help me with City-States and a production boost, although, I should've gone with a food Belief because I'm really slow-growing. After finishing Liberty I picked Great Prophet for me "free" Great Person and finished my Beliefs. I got the Faith from Amphitheatres and one which makes spreading to City-States easier.

It took a long time for my religion to spread to a second city, but once there, several other cities quickly followed. I made a missionary to spread my religion to a couple of City-States that had quests for my religion. One also had a barb camp quest which I nicked at the same time. I got max allied points with that one. if only I had enough money, I could DM it and get another port city.

It seems that my religion might spread soon to America and Russia. Sweden and England have their own religions too, but they don't have any negative diplomatic modifiers for being different. I think you need to aggressively spread your religion to their lands to get that.

I anticipate that as I move into the Renassiance, money will become more available and I can use spies to help with City-States, I will be buying them up left and right. I figure with that kind of spread-out empire that I will go for a science victory.

I playing Austria for my first game it's awesome so far. I'm still playing the game.

The AI still takes its own sweet time to finish Spaceship Parts it seems. Maybe its because I switched off Time Victory, and then sometime in 310, Maria built the UN with the only problem being no one really liked her or each other much and that there were no city-states left...

Yeah, that's right. The Vote for World Ruler got stymied forever thanks to Austrian Marriages, and the AIs just left down their spaceship parts into dust heaps, eagerly anticipating someone will vote for them which is kinda lol.

Some shots:


Good olde lump sum-dow




Just as I closed in on the last free capital of the world, Darius suddenly got the bright idea to finally complete his parts

Alas it was too late





e: he had SS Boosters by T398, and he didn't even bother adding them

zomg said:

Played a couple hours last night!! Celts/small/emperor. All new civs.

I REALLY LIKE the religions, they made it very very cool. I've got over 600 hours on the game so far and i see that doubling before I get done with it. I originally started with carthage but there werent any mountains so I restarted and went for the religion aspect.

I've only had one war - with Attila. I managed to hold him off with just an archer and a pict warrior, fortunately he had a circuitous route with hills and a mountain that let me bleed him pretty bad. One ram made it to my city and got a few hits in, yikes! those things hit hard!! Long story short, he was basically one attack from taking it but I held. Now hes pretty much exhausted himself. So basically I havent seen anything amazing from the AI so far but it still operates enough to make me sweat a bit.

Money has been a huge issue. I am overflowing in faith and happiness but not enough money!! Not sure whats changed here but I dont recall going bankrupt so fast before, I didnt even know about the reduced beakers from bankruptcy before, did it even work this way? Got currency and finally dug my way out.

Overall, seems like an amazing addition. I really like playing the celts, they give a unique perspective the way any good civ should (put you cities around trees), and the faith mechanic also changes my perspective depending on beliefs and what resources are nearby to give the best synergy. I really feel like I have a lot to explore here!!!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

I was trying to figure out why commerce is changed myslef, it appears to me we really have 4 choices now, Commerce, Religion, War or Tech. And you will need to focus on each one to get it up and running.

Defensive buildings have become much more effective. Each now adds HP as well as Strength to your city:

Walls 5 +50HP
Castle 7 +25HP
Arsenal 9 +25HP
Military Base 12 +25HP

for Walls has been buffed by +1
for Castle has been buffed by +3
for Arsenal is unchanged
for Military base is unchanged

Not sure if the Kremlin's +25% effectiveness for defensive buildings acts as a multiplier for HP as well as Strength.

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).

Click to expand...

I can't say I found the AI to be more aggressive, but they still will declare war on you if you're close by and have no military. But Declarations of Friendship seem to mean much more to the AI now than it was in vanilla.

That being said, Atilla requested to be my friend, I declined, and the next turn my spy in his court informed me that he was plotting against me. Hm.... The Huns are an inscrutable folk.

Yeah there's a lot more jungle in the standard game, at least in my Boudicca game. This was very annoying when Haile's capital literally had either 3 or 4 hexes of jungle coming out from his capital when he has his UU running around. Luckily I had just gotten artillery and.. well, you know.

Artillery still wins wars.

Sharku said:

First impressions I've noticed is the every AI computer opponent hates you forever the instant
you go to war with someone. Its really annoying actually.
Liberty is as powerful as ever and Order has been buffed even more lol.
While Piety is basically dead.

Click to expand...

War monger hate has been revamped. Not perfect bu you can repair relations depending on what the hate factors are. For example I founght a war against Austria who had Byz and Dutch join in against me but later on I declare war on Byz and Austria declared war on Byz. They didnt become friendly (guarded actually0 but it wasnt eternal hate and i became allies with the dutch.

kungming2 said:

Hey Aussie,

Since in G&K each civ can only found one religion, what I've found so far is that if you or another civ found a religion that automatically becomes your "main religion." Civs which did not found a religion (including those that have pantheons) will just treat the one followed by a majority of their cities as their main religion. Example in my game, Sweden has three cities, with Stockholm the capital having more population than the other two combined. But after flipping the other two to Buddhist from Confucian, he now treats Buddhism as his main religion even though there are more Confucians.

But there's no Civ IV-esque button to switch to a religion AFAIK.

Click to expand...

yes there is no state religion btton or choice. you go wit the majority of cities. I played a game as a follower to see if being a founder was make-or-break gameplay and found that you can follow you just give up your benefits to chance or your nearest neighbor, unless you capture other missionaries and bring them home. but once a majority of cities were the same as Austria's religion she gave me a diplo positive for adopting her Judaism.

Here's a thing that really annoyed me. I had picked out a silly name for a religion. It didn't fit in the custom name field. It seems to be limited to about 16 characters.

Eagle Pursuit said:

Here's a thing that really annoyed me. I had picked out a silly name for a religion. It didn't fit in the custom name field. It seems to be limited to about 16 characters.

Click to expand...

The Clap

"You have spread The Clap to New York."