Something seems a bit overpowered here

Very pleased that they have made cities noticeably harder to take.
In early game I experienced the opposite so far. Units, on the other hand... :crazyeye: Very cool. Medics became really important, as they should be. And it's time for me to play a full length game to have a clue what the heck people are talking about. :D
 
Cities definitely harder to take in the early game.

You also can't just expect the AI to fold. Taking cities is now more about a series of battles. In vanilla , you can hold back a little and wait for the AI to most of their forces to attack you, wipe them out, then march towards their cities and face almost no opposition.

This is no longer possible. Though it's likely and possible the invading force will win the first battles before they reach the city, the AI hold substantial reserves back. This forces you to setup a proper seige while protecting your flanks from counter-attacks because the AI can and will hide massive armies in the fog. It will look like their city is undefended but they would well have substantial reserves a few tiles into the fog.

The change in hp also forces players to put some real skin in the game. You can no longer shoot from a distance with crossbows and seige units and close in with your melee units in one turn to rush a modestly defended city. You need to move your forces all in range, and have them firing away/taking fire until the city is weakened enough to take it.
 
I have Madrid quite close to me and while they were pretty weak (their only city), it was situated on a the coast surrounded by three-tiles deep jungles and hills (size 10 but I forget the defense). I couldn't get any range units, archers or cats, in place so instead, I built four Swords and two Dromons. The Dromons acted as my ranged units and while needing just to get two of the four Swords in place before it fell. Each of the Dromons did 19-34 damage, probably better better than what any archers or cats could've done. Lots of expenditures for a relatively weak capital but in a good location.
 
I've noticed this too, and I think it's a change for the better. Properly defended capital cities on hills should be impossible to take without a long siege (like CYZ described) or a big tech advantage. This is historical, and also gives gameplay some bite. In my last game, I wiped out several Carthaginian cities, but had to rein things in when I got near the capital. It was going to be a bloodbath and I might not win, so I decided to take Carthage's gold for peace and turn on Atilla instead. I was pleased with this development, which wouldn't have happened in vanilla Civ 5. It's more like the decisions real national leaders have to make. In Civ 5 vanilla I never had any more thinking to do once I had turned the tide of battle against an AI. Now, there's a little more to it.
 
Why is it that barbarians, but never the AI, pillage improvements?

It was patched out in vanilla awhile back. The AI would pillage when it should have attacked or vice versa. I guess they either could not get it to work properly or did not want to spend the time and resources fixing it properly so they just disabled it boo :(

Edit: The AI still will pillage resource tiles, just not regular tiles.

Sorry for off topic response.
 
It's pretty tough up until Artillery/Great War Bomber now. Certain cities (behind rivers, on hills, on narrow strips of land) can be tough to take.

The worst was somebody built the Great Wall as well as the Kremlin (Kremlin being built was a bit of a shock, since it seems to be neglected long periods of time) in the same city. I finally took it with a ring of Artillery around it knocking down every unit they could muster while airpower lowered the city's defence.

Imagine sieging Ethiopia's capital when it has their UU around it, you're bigger than them, they have the Great Wall and Kremlin, and they have the religion belief that gives them a bonus for fighting around their own religion's cities. Ridiculous.
 
The biggest problem I have now is actually a hybrid balance/ai gripe. City bombard strength is through the roof – with an era-appropriate ranged unit garrisoned, a city now seems to be able to consistently one-shot siege units in its range even with tech parity. The way to get around this is to make sure you have a damaged melee unit in range of the city, since AI targeting priority seems to be damaged melee > damaged siege > undamaged siege > undamaged melee. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.) That balances out the ridiculous damage opposing cities/garrisons will level at you, but at the end of the day you're just shoddy AI design to work around what IMO seems like a legit balance issue. I think it would be better if cities took longer still to bombard down, but they nerfed their damage as well. That way it would still take a large commitment, as it should, but without having to rely on exploiting the AI to do it feasibly.
 
If you make the AI always do something players can find ways around it by playing to the predictable. Instead of asking for damage nerf, I think it may be more interesting if we ask the devs to make city AI targeting less predictable.

Perhaps weighting the chance of targeting a damaged melee equally with a seige unit they can oneshot.

I'd even propose flavours for individual leaders where perhaps one leader will go for their seige unit more often while another will target differently, but that's probably too much work.

I'd be satisfied if the AI targeting is somewhat random, but not dumb. Also Sometimes there may never be a right answer in terms of which unit the city should target, but I'm always in favour of removing exploits that come out of the AI's predictably by making the AI unpredictable.

That said the reason I'm not in favour of a nerf is this. What I like about the current change is it does force players to get more skin in the game. Even if you want to screw up their targeting, you may have to sacrifice a few melee units to get your seige units positioned without taking damage. That's a good change. So suddenly, instead of 2 capaults and a handful of swords conquering an entire empire, you need to at minimum replenish your swords.

That's not counting losing even more units from reserves the AI may have hidden away in the fog. It's a good change overall.
 
I dont mind citys being harder to take its something I wanted in regular civ5 but I would like the option to seige without taking full damage.
 
Huh. I've never had the AI pillage my resource tiles--why is it they don't pillage all the tiles? There's no harm in stealing hold from the humans. It makes the AI just a bit more annoying (and it's more satisfying when we take 'em down).
 
I've played a game as the dutch and maya, going tall for each of the games (emperor difficulty), had 3 cities, was overrun as soon as my giant neighbor (Ethiopia, Siam-who by the way runs away in EVERY game i play now) got air. Air has gotten a huge boost, with the WW1 plane and bomber, and the AI seems to utilize them much more effectively now. They have been responsible for completely wiping out my existence in the last two games ive played.
 
Cities definitely harder to take in the early game.
2 era appropriate siege units + 2 melee take down an average city.
The hard part is getting in position to siege it, which is possible only if you wipe out all defenders. For the second consecutive game I had a feeling I was playing on marathon. The overall pace is sooo slow compared to what it used to be. :crazyeye:

You also can't just expect the AI to fold. Taking cities is now more about a series of battles. In vanilla , you can hold back a little and wait for the AI to most of their forces to attack you, wipe them out, then march towards their cities and face almost no opposition.
The principle is the same, it only takes thrice the time. :D And you get the good ol' cheesy peace offer. Now when diplo matters (well, sort of), in some cases if AI doesn't attack, human player won't attack either. Thus AI shouldn't DoW if it can't back it up with sufficient (in AI terms :rolleyes:) force. Tonight I played as Dutch, spawned between America and Songhai. Got DoWed twice by each. They ended up with one city, I ended up with 15k of gold and 8 puppets. :rolleyes: The irony is, I really planned to play nicely this time.

This is no longer possible. Though it's likely and possible the invading force will win the first battles before they reach the city, the AI hold substantial reserves back. This forces you to setup a proper seige while protecting your flanks from counter-attacks because the AI can and will hide massive armies in the fog. It will look like their city is undefended but they would well have substantial reserves a few tiles into the fog.
Heh, yep. AI's execution is still clumsy, but it's not boring at least. When I was sieging Gao no units showed up for several turns. So I bombarded it a little, pillaging and gaining XP, since I've assumed I had nothing to lose and Askia was a goner, and then all of a sudden 5 or 6 pikes/crossbows came out of nowhere and moved towards my crossbows and trebs. Not pleasant. :crazyeye:
What I really like is that now you have to bring all kind of units with you, melee, range and siege. LS alone won't cut it anymore. :)
 
Cities does seem to e a lot harder now. Not necessarily a bad thing, but imho it is not completely balanced. For instance, Walls add 50HP, while later defensive buildings only add 25HP (It seems they have not learned anything from the OP library/Colloseum from the beginning of vanilla civ5). I hope they patch it so the Palace gets +25HP and Walls is reduced to +25HP. This way, capitals are still extremely difficult (as it should be), but other cities are a bit better.

Also, I like cities being strong defensive, so the civ that is being attacked has more time to bring reinforcements, but the offensive capabilities are too strong now. That should be lower, and maybe add extra HP to the city if you want to balance it out. Also, the 50% from the Social Policy in Tradition could be reduced to 34%, and making the Pantheon for ranged cities stronger. It is weird you can have a huge bonus from a easy to get SP, and a smaller one for a unique Pantheon. Make the Pantheon bonus 50%.
 
I think if they reworked it so ships in port couldn't bombard, it would make a huge difference. As it is, coastal cities are much more difficult to take since 1) siege vs. units got nerfed so hard, 2) cities get so much more HP, and 3) melee vs. cities got nerfed to hell. So being able to stack a ship and a ranged unit behind those enormous defenses is just too good.
Whaat? Coastal cities are super-easy to take with just a handful of Frigates or other ranged naval units, especially with the Range promotion.

Very pleased that they have made cities noticeably harder to take.
Absolutely! :goodjob:
 
Whaat? Coastal cities are super-easy to take with just a handful of Frigates or other ranged naval units, especially with the Range promotion.

Depends. I guess my experience is colored by the fact that of the two I've tried to take, both had only one hex of coast. So you could only squeeze ships in one at a time, which would get blasted away quickly between city bombardment, garrisoned defender, and ship in port.
 
I find it cool that coastal cities with superior fleet are VERY tough to conquer. Very realistic.

Think Constantinoble in the 1300's. It took the turks a long time before they could conquer it in 1453. It was a huge city with fleet support.

Now in CiV you HAVE to bring a fleet to take down his sea support if you wish to conquer a coastal city (unless you really bring a lot of land units, just like the turks did)
 
Whaat? Coastal cities are super-easy to take with just a handful of Frigates or other ranged naval units, especially with the Range promotion.


Absolutely! :goodjob:

I'm still hoping that the range promotion will be removed from navy units. It's too easy for the player to use it to attack cities from a distance. Making Battleships the first 3 range naval unit seems more appropriate.

Depends. I guess my experience is colored by the fact that of the two I've tried to take, both had only one hex of coast. So you could only squeeze ships in one at a time, which would get blasted away quickly between city bombardment, garrisoned defender, and ship in port.

yup. If there's a wide area near the capital, it's easy to take with Frigates. If there's not, then don't bother until the frigates have logistics and can cycle. Ofc, Frigates vs. high defence cities barely scratch them - so at least that helps.
 
I've noticed that Gattlings take a much lower amount of damage from bombardment - maybe something as simple as missing flag on siege units would help? My first game I held off a HUGE warrior/spear/catapult rush vs Spain with a single warrior and without even the Tradition boost, because I could 2-shot both cats and the rest couldnt touch me.
 
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