Death of Conventional Strategies? [11/18 Patch Notes]

There are more ways to play besides horse rush or ICS, and I think a lot of people undervalue the ancient social policies.

The three ancient trees are designed for different starting goals. Tradition for building wonders and a large capital. Liberty for rapid expansion. And Honor for warmongering, obviously.
 
There are more ways to play besides horse rush or ICS, and I think a lot of people undervalue the ancient social policies.

The three ancient trees are designed for different starting goals. Tradition for building wonders and a large capital. Liberty for rapid expansion. And Honor for warmongering, obviously.

+1 food gives me a large capital? That's the problem with Tradition. You start off with: Here, have some nothing!

I think oligarchy has some use, but generally I'm not seeing a lot worth having on the Tradition tree playing at immortal or deity levels. I'm not saying there are no strategies other than rush (warriors/swords work too) or ICS, but I don't know what they might be.

So if Tradition isn't any good (please convince me otherwise), that basically leaves you with Liberty (ICS/REX) and Honor (rushing) or a combination of the two. I don't play below iImmortal level because it's too easy for me. If Tradition is good at prince, then fine, it should stay as it is, but I just don't see how that +1 food compares to cheap settlers or find the barbarians.
 
+1 food gives me a large capital? That's the problem with Tradition. You start off with: Here, have some nothing!

I think oligarchy has some use, but generally I'm not seeing a lot worth having on the Tradition tree playing at immortal or deity levels. I'm not saying there are no strategies other than rush (warriors/swords work too) or ICS, but I don't know what they might be.

So if Tradition isn't any good (please convince me otherwise), that basically leaves you with Liberty (ICS/REX) and Honor (rushing) or a combination of the two. I don't play below iImmortal level because it's too easy for me. If Tradition is good at prince, then fine, it should stay as it is, but I just don't see how that +1 food compares to cheap settlers or find the barbarians.

I play on Immortal and think Tradition could use a serious buffing up. It should give you +2 or even +3 food in the capital and the benefits of legalism and landed elite should be increased to 50% from 33% if not more. That being said, I'd probably still go with Liberty or Honor or a combo of them.

.. neilkaz ..
 
I think oligarchy has some use, but generally I'm not seeing a lot worth having on the Tradition tree playing at immortal or deity levels. I'm not saying there are no strategies other than rush (warriors/swords work too) or ICS, but I don't know what they might be.

The way I see it, the game has basically four viable strategies:

1)The pure military rush with honor. Horsemen are probably the easiest, but swords, longswords, and catapults all work. Even a warrior rush works. Pretty simple stuff. With highly-promoted units and human tactics, you can steamroll any AI.

2)The "REX, then build" strategy where you build about 15 cities as fast as you can, but then stop settling. Libraries and universities with scientists will carry you forward in tech extremely fast. Freedom and rationalism/secularism are the policies you want here. This is probably the fastest way to win a spaceship or diplomatic victory on higher levels.

3)The "delayed ICS" build. In this, you settle only a few cities early on, and save up culture points so that you can take a lot of good policies later. With this strategy you can take communism, and then settle a huge number of cities with massive production. This strategy takes a while to get going, but once it does it gives you an insane amount of gold and production.

4)The "pure ICS" build. This strategy takes policies in liberty, and settles as many cities as possible, throughout the entire game, without ever stopping. This works best on lower difficulty levels, where the happiness penalty is less severe and the AI won't challenge you for land (your city defense is enough to stop most of their attacks on lower levels lol).

If they patch it so that you can't save policies, they're pretty much killing strategies 2 and 3, leaving us with only pure rush or pure ICS (unless you can micromanage very carefully to circumvent the rule). The game is simple enough as it is, we don't need them to take away any viable strategies.

Tradition is only really useful in multiplayer, since oligarchy is your only hope for settling cities and defending them against someone doing a pure honor/rush strategy.
 
That +1 food may not seem like much, however if you get the 30 culture from one of the first ruins you find and take that, you can grow the capital much faster, or even immediately shift to production to get those early units built faster while still growing. Sure it's not as good as a granary or Maritime CS, but it can be quite useful, especially when coupled with the first policy in Liberty. The reason I say this is because food and hammers both count as hammers when making settlers. This makes it so your capital can pump out a few extra settlers faster while the new cities focus on their coliseums and libraries. Alternately, when coupled with a 3 food tile, that +1 food, gives just enough to feed that first science specialist, or that first citizen on a mine tile.

I've been trying out this combo with Napoleon and so far I've sped up my early game by a few turns, which is pretty good for me, since I still suck at the early rush on Immortal and Deity. I was playing these tests as if the next patch had already come out, ie. taking the policies and promotions on the turn they're earned.
 
The way I see it, the game has basically four viable strategies

Obviously there are more than four viable strategies, since I always win on Emperor by a wide margin, applying self-defined handicaps, and use nothing remotely resembling any of the four you mentioned. I assume you mean four "optimal" strategies, but you single out the fourth as not being as strong. So let's say three.

Are all three more or less equal, or are there really one or two "optimal" strategies? (Don't ask me. I gave up ICS and REX with Civ 3, and have never tried them on Civ 5.) Whatever the number, "optimal" presumably means beating the AI as quickly as possible, rather than by as high a score as possible, or any other self-defined victory goal. So if your goal is to race yourself with the same long-established strategy over and over again, I would agree that your already limited "optimal" options have just been reduced. That's the downside of playing that way - any rules shifts threaten to upset the "optimal" apple cart. To me, on the other hand, most rules shifts only create more variation.
 
The way I see it, the game has basically four viable strategies:

Obviously there are more than four viable strategies, since I always win on Emperor by a wide margin, applying self-defined handicaps, and use nothing remotely resembling any of the four you mentioned. I assume you mean four "optimal" strategies, but you single out the fourth as not being as strong. So let's say three.

Are all three more or less equal, or are there really one or two "optimal" strategies? (Don't ask me. I gave up ICS and REX with Civ 3, and have never tried them on Civ 5.) Whatever the number, "optimal" presumably means beating the AI as quickly as possible, rather than by as high a score as possible, or any other self-defined victory goal. So if your goal is to race yourself with the same long-established strategy over and over again, I would agree that your already limited "optimal" options have just been reduced. That's the downside of playing that way - any rules shifts threaten to upset the "optimal" apple cart. To me, on the other hand, most rules shifts only create more variation.

I believe pi-r8's referring to what's pretty much required to beat the game on immortal & deity, or at the very least keep up with the AI on deity. Emperor is a whole lot easier, because the AI isn't starting with 2 settlers, 2 workers, 3 warriors, 1 scout and several more techs like it does on Deity. Thus the AI on emperor only has 1 city until it builds a settler, so doesn't crank out troops, or blow through the techs as fast.
 
Obviously there are more than four viable strategies, since I always win on Emperor by a wide margin, applying self-defined handicaps, and use nothing remotely resembling any of the four you mentioned. I assume you mean four "optimal" strategies, but you single out the fourth as not being as strong. So let's say three.

Are all three more or less equal, or are there really one or two "optimal" strategies? (Don't ask me. I gave up ICS and REX with Civ 3, and have never tried them on Civ 5.) Whatever the number, "optimal" presumably means beating the AI as quickly as possible, rather than by as high a score as possible, or any other self-defined victory goal. So if your goal is to race yourself with the same long-established strategy over and over again, I would agree that your already limited "optimal" options have just been reduced. That's the downside of playing that way - any rules shifts threaten to upset the "optimal" apple cart. To me, on the other hand, most rules shifts only create more variation.

By viable I just meant that nothing else comes close in power or speed. Those strategies just leave everything else in the dust. Of course there's other ways you can win- the civ V AI is so bad that you can win without any social policies at all, like Alpaca is demonstrating now. But the economics of the game are highly favorable to one of those strategies.

I'm not sure which strategy is really optimal- it depends on what your definition of optimal is I guess. If you just want to win as quickly as possible, I'm guessing that a horseman rush with honor can't be beat. If you want a peaceful victory, I think the strategy #1 is fastest on deity (see Martin Alvito's thread for details) but strategy #4 is fastest on emperor and below (see the fastest settler spaceship thread). strategy #3 doesn't really win as fast, but it does set up the most powerful empires.
 
By viable I just meant that nothing else comes close in power or speed.
I suggest you replace viable with optimal. Almost anything is viable, even up to Immortal, in the sense that you can follow it and win without too much difficulty.
 
I believe pi-r8's referring to what's pretty much required to beat the game on immortal & deity, or at the very least keep up with the AI on deity. Emperor is a whole lot easier, because the AI isn't starting with 2 settlers, 2 workers, 3 warriors, 1 scout and several more techs like it does on Deity. Thus the AI on emperor only has 1 city until it builds a settler, so doesn't crank out troops, or blow through the techs as fast.

I'm not sure he was, based on his response, but that doesn't matter. To me it's all a matter of what you want. Immortal is much harder than Emperor, and Deity is much harder than Immortal. The higher the level, the fewer the strategic options. Since most decent players play on a level where they almost always win, I'd rather play on one where the handicaps - be they AI strength or self-imposed limits like Alplaca's - gives me many more ways with which to entertain myself. Emperor seems like the best bet for that. Coincidentally, the upcoming SP changes don't limit my choices - they just change them.
 
The yardstick for CIV is not multiplayer on quick settings - multiplayers are just a tiny fraction of the total CIV players (probably way less than 1%) and to balance CIV around short MP sessions would simply be illogical.

The yardstick is single player, standard settings, all difficulty levels. that's where the game needs to be balanced (without taking away "fun factor"). On those settings, ICS is a beast because the AI doesn't punish the player like he would be in multiplayer. Horse rush is also a beast because the AI cannot defend against it effectively.

I hear ya guy. The patch is too much though. Online the game is extremely balanced. If they do that patch will be garbage. They need to work on the ai and not nerf.
 
By viable I just meant that nothing else comes close in power or speed. Those strategies just leave everything else in the dust. Of course there's other ways you can win- the civ V AI is so bad that you can win without any social policies at all, like Alpaca is demonstrating now. But the economics of the game are highly favorable to one of those strategies.

I'm not sure which strategy is really optimal- it depends on what your definition of optimal is I guess. If you just want to win as quickly as possible, I'm guessing that a horseman rush with honor can't be beat. If you want a peaceful victory, I think the strategy #1 is fastest on deity (see Martin Alvito's thread for details) but strategy #4 is fastest on emperor and below (see the fastest settler spaceship thread). strategy #3 doesn't really win as fast, but it does set up the most powerful empires.

I agree with all this. I just like to occasionally point out that - against a substandard AI - there are other viable strategies besides the optimal ones that can make the game more varied, and therefore more fun for some.
 
Every week I come back to this site for Civ5 news and I keep finding new reasons to lament the loss of my wasted money. Sigh.
 
I'd like to see in this patch some AI city attack improvements.

In my current China game Oda DoWed on Brussels and since I'd already had an early limited war with Oda, I demanded peace with Brussels from him and he said NO.

I DoW and marched my forces in that have been sitting on his border, near his capital, for 50ish turns. It takes me several turns to cross a river and some hills. Around 4 turns after my DoW I have his capital ready to attack.

By now I have killed 4 units and am allies with Brussels. This allows me to see his huge army sitting around Brussels and attacking one unit a turn and not falling back to defend Kyoto. This is some 10 or more turns since he DoWed on Brussels.

I won leaving him a rubbish city between me, Suliman and Alexander. If he had attacked Brussels properly from the start he could have stode a chance of falling back and stopping or slowing my attack on Kyoto, and he might still have some empire left. Or not :scan:

p.s. The Papermaker is such an awsome UB!
 
The changes are nice, I think the community as a collective was wondering when OP Horsemen and Maritime CSes would be nerfed. Good step in the right direction. Now to nerf puppet states. At least slightly. Unhappiness from puppeting is fine, but do make social policies cost at least a BIT more when puppeting, seriously. Otherwise peaceful Gandhi will never win cultural in a reasonable time, esp. when his civ bonus relies for efficacy on NOT puppeting. -_-

Puppets should probably produce no culture at all. Thus they would be "culture neutral" with neither drain nor gain. A conqueror will get enough gold and science to be happy anyway...

2)The "REX, then build" strategy where you build about 15 cities as fast as you can, but then stop settling. Libraries and universities with scientists will carry you forward in tech extremely fast. Freedom and rationalism/secularism are the policies you want here. This is probably the fastest way to win a spaceship or diplomatic victory on higher levels.

If they patch it so that you can't save policies, they're pretty much killing strategies 2 and 3, leaving us with only pure rush or pure ICS (unless you can micromanage very carefully to circumvent the rule). The game is simple enough as it is, we don't need them to take away any viable strategies.

Will strat 2 really be that hurt? If you build 15+ or even 10+ cities quickly and build minimal new culture I don't see why you should have to take more than a couple of SPs (for Liberty) before costs skyrocket to where you can easily delay new policies until the Renaissance even without tight beelining?
 
Like some other commenters, I haven't seen the effects of this patch yet. Has it actually been pushed through in .621?

On the actual notes: Once again Firaxis have "fixed" their game by removing player options. Oh well Firaxis, you already lost me as a future customer.

Arguments in favor of "realism" are completely ridiculous. It's a freaking TURN-BASED COMPUTER GAME. How much more unrealistic can you get? Focus should be on playability, not unachievable "realism".
 
It's a freaking TURN-BASED COMPUTER GAME. How much more unrealistic can you get? Focus should be on playability, not unachievable "realism".
The other problem with realism is that you can make an argument that almost anything is realistic. I think it is far easier to get agreement on what is fun than what is real. As pointed out, it's already not real by default.
 
It's not real, but the game needs to be "real enough" to be fun. It's a sliding scale - too much realism takes away from fun, but too much "fun" can make it not civ anymore, but some fantasy world game, which is not what most of us want.
 
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