First Impressions

[jjkrause84]

Oh, can I also say: thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences! Hugely appreciated!

[nokmirt]

Originally Posted by smallfish

Did Austria reach Renaissance before everyone else?

If so, this will put her on the "must-watch-out-science-runaway-types" list. Its made worse by the fact that she can turn CSes into her own production cities!

She may have, but I am not sure about the other continent yet. She did marry Mombasa into her empire, which is in a horrible tundra city locale. I probably will burn it down, or liberate it. Or can it be liberated once she marries it? We'll see. I do know she is ahead of me in tech.

[Randall_Flagg]

Bcaiko, are you having to rest after each battle still? Well maybe you do not as Japan, but I know I do after every battle.

[RockTheCazbah87]

Originally Posted by jjkrause84

Oh, can I also say: thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences! Hugely appreciated!

Seconded.

There's a chance my copy might not even arrive 'til Monday which would be unbelievably infuriating, so thanks very much for all of you guys' efforts across the pond. Keep 'em coming, would love to see some screenshots too!

[Buccaneer]

I'm glad to hear that religion is not dominant in the game but primarily offer SP-like bonuses.

[Ulthwithian]

Asymmetric: They upgrade to Melee units. These are the only units left that can gain 'dead' promotions.

[CDegeyter]

Originally Posted by kungming2

My first impressions:

My missionary that was captured by barbarians stayed a missionary when I recaptured him. He didn't turn into a worker or something, thankfully.

Wow I have been playing too much civ. I immediately thought "Hey that Missionary should have enlightened the barbarians while he was there!" Religion spread by barbs woo hoo!..

ok back to reality.

[Simplicity4]

I started my game as Boudica, as I wanted to try out religion the first time through. Playing on King. Exploring with a scout, and I find my first neighbor. Friendly Monty. Ugh. My next neighbor... Hiawatha. Oh... This is not going to go well. Chose Tradition for my social policy. Wanted to get Stonehenge for more faith. Also, Liberty settler is moved lower to make that a less easy choice. Honor barbarian bonus increased to +33%.

I've found that barbarians are a bit easier to clear out due to the slower combat. One warrior can attack, do damage, then fortify and heal (which barbarians never seem to do... I hope they keep it that way, personally). Rinse and repeat until the camp is gone. This is a good thing because it's one of the ways to gain a little City State love. I cleared out a camp next to Lisbon and they became instant friends. +35 influence.

I get my second city down and Monty and Hiawatha go to war with each other. Hallelujah! After doing a little dance, I decide to Protect the nearby city state of Lisbon (which gives you a +10 to the resting-state for influence now), and I found Shitzuism (at like 350 faith... not sure I like the random element there. Why is it necessary?). I start working on my Pictish Warriors. The best feature of the Pictish Warriors isn't their faith bonus. It's the fact that they get like +20% outside friendly borders. Yay! Manage to get Stonehenge (+5 faith) and Great Library out.

Monty and Hiawatha settle their differences and not ten turns later it's Jaguar Warrior and Archer city outside my borders. Monty demands tribute from Lisbon, which is under my protection. I get a notification that either says: (1) "You'll pay" Provoke Monty and possible war, or (2) "Very well" -20 influence with Lisbon. Huh. Nice addition. It'd be nicer if I could be more confident that the AI is taking into account my protector status... But I chose 1, since the mass troops indicated the Monty was going to attack me soon anyways.

And of course he did (though after waiting a couple of turns to do so). I wasn't sure if I'd like the slower combat, but I definitely approve. It just feels better. You see the war progressing one way or the other. You have time to react. So far I've been holding him off, but it's definitely an aggressive attack. Almost lost a city. Probably would have lost it if Monty had just focused on one location. He went for two of my cities at once (which might have worked for him... he had a lot of units).

[Heerlo]

Smallfish, I'm mostly looking through this thread just to find your posts!

Nice story.

[strijder20]

Glad to see how well Austria (ab)uses it's UP, judging on Smallfish's game.

[Asymmetric]

Originally Posted by smallfish

Chariot Archers go to Knights/Cavalry/Landship/Tanks/Modern

Originally Posted by Ulthwithian

Asymmetric: They upgrade to Melee units. These are the only units left that can gain 'dead' promotions.

Ah poop. I was hoping they would upgrade into crossbowmen.

Puts a bit of a damper on Attila's Horse archers. I'm sure I'll find a use for them though...

[Captain Fargle]

Originally Posted by nokmirt

She may have, but I am not sure about the other continent yet. She did marry Mombasa into her empire, which is in a horrible tundra city locale. I probably will burn it down, or liberate it. Or can it be liberated once she marries it? We'll see. I do know she is ahead of me in tech.

Once a City State has been married into Austria it can no longer be liberated. For all intents and purposes it's as if it had always been an Austrian city.

[V. Soma]

Oh, I also want to thank for all the "impressions", I also suffer being European...

[Ellye]

Thanks to all, too! I can't play yet due to being from South America, but reading this thread was really pleasing for this work afternoon.

[mlund]

I took Byzantium for a spin last night and decided to experiment with the Religion mechanics on account of their Unique Ability. Other than that, I stuck to my default game plan of early expansion via Liberty and going to war once my initial push into Classical was over.

Byzantium's special ability was pretty awesome. I had my pick of the litter when it came to bonus beliefs - I could even grab an extra pantheon belief. Terrain-based pantheon beliefs can be incredible. +1 food from a camp was fantastic in a start with multiple Deer and Furs, for example, was gang-busters.

The value of Faith in the middle game seems to depend a lot of how you pick beliefs, though. If you don't take a belief that allows you to spend Faith on a building or military units a faith-happy Empire is going to let those points idle. There's only so many Missionaries you want to build, so it's nice to be able to throw up a Cathedral or Pagoda.

My Vanilla Civ plan for expansion completely fell flat. Moving the free Settler down the policy tree made the free Worker a huge set-back. Bullying, building, or stealing a worker is definitely better.

Additionally, city self-defense actually works in Gods and Kings, making Vanilla Civ rushes a pointless waste of time. Infantry don't do enough damage to bother attacking with and cities hit very hard - both in bombardment and rebuffing the infantry attacks. Archery units are finally balanced - they do paltry damage to cities. You really need Siege units, and Catapults don't need Iron anymore (huzzah). However, Siege units can't survive bombardment by cities from a more advanced era.

I run right up to the Inca's capital. It sat on a hill. It had a bowman in the garrison. It had a wall. I believe they took Tradition. They'd just cleared into the Medieval period and the city-archer combo would deal 100HP damage per turn to my Catapults. The siege obviously failed. The only chance to make it work was to upgrade to Trebs, which required running all the way to Physics - at which time the Incas would've made it out of the Medieval period and started the whole thing over again.

The lesson here is that your Infantry and Archers can't take cities, and your Siege can't survive long enough to contribute if you're behind on tech. An AI with a tech lead is going to be very hard to dislodge militarily if they've paid any attention to fortifications.

I had much better luck in the next game when I skipped Liberty for Honor, brought on a Great General + Discipline, and kept technology tight and skipped the Catapult siege for Trebs. That gave me enough extra strength to avoid having my Trebs burned down in a single turn of city + garrison shooting.

It seems really important to get buffs on your Siege equipment if you want them to live in a fight to cut an advanced civ down to size. Honor is one route. Another could be to build them with Barracks and then farm the second promotion from barbarians to get Cover. I almost never used cover in Vanilla Civ - always opting for a bombardment bonus against cities instead.

Also, the tech progression between eras and unit groupings seems much better in the Ancient - Medieval eras on Standard. Even without a rush strategy there's time to wage at least 2 solid campaigns against comparably sized Civilizations before anyone runs out Gun Powder.

All in all I really like what I see. It's a sharp shift in tactics for the better, IMO.

- Marty Lund

[Calouste]

Started a game as Aztecs, King/Pangea, everything else standard. Had to reroll because they no longer seem to have a river start bias, which is a bit of a pain considering the UB requires fresh water. Ended up in a location with massive amounts of jungle. When I got a 20 Faith from a ruin, I decided to pick Sacred Path (1 culture on all Jungle), with the idea of leaving all the Jungle up for University science and Trading Posts. I had two Truffles in the Jungle I could work as well.

The Jaguar has recieved a small boost (now +33% in both Forest and Jungle, and heals 25 HP on a kill), and the new combat system means you can fairly easily take out Barbs without worrying that your unit is killed. You attack twice, then pick your promotion and kill on the third attack, or after a bit of healing. Higher combat values for a lot of units means more culture for the Aztecs.

I eyed another riverside spot with a lot of Jungle for my second city. Not a lot of production, but lots of science and gold potential, so I went Tradition and then the right side of Commerce to be able to just buy buildings there, then Rationalism to get the Trading Post science bonus. My Jungle tiles are now 2421 Only problem is that building improvements in the Jungle takes 13 turns and outside the Pyramids or taking Citizenship, there is no way to speed thing up, not even with Replacable Parts or Steam Power like it was in previous civs.

I raced through a few Renaissance techs towards Industrialization, and used the Gatling guns to hold of an invasion of Siam. Other than that I've had peace with everyone else so far. Was thinking about getting a DoF with my close neighbour Austria, but she was fighting Korea all the time and I didn't really want to get involved in that. In the later game I occassionally got warnings about the Iroquois planning an invasion, but that has so far failed to materialize.

I'm quite far a head in tech, so I'm now opening up Autocracy to learn Siam a lesson. Mercantilism + Big Ben + Militarism is going to result in a lot of unit buying.

[Cicero63]

One thing that I have noticed is that the Netherlands have a great starting bias, they can make a lot of money early

[Calouste]

Originally Posted by mlund

Additionally, city self-defense actually works in Gods and Kings, making Vanilla Civ rushes a pointless waste of time. Infantry don't do enough damage to bother attacking with and cities hit very hard - both in bombardment and rebuffing the infantry attacks. Archery units are finally balanced - they do paltry damage to cities. You really need Siege units, and Catapults don't need Iron anymore (huzzah). However, Siege units can't survive bombardment by cities from a more advanced era.

I run right up to the Inca's capital. It sat on a hill. It had a bowman in the garrison. It had a wall. I believe they took Tradition. They'd just cleared into the Medieval period and the city-archer combo would deal 100HP damage per turn to my Catapults. The siege obviously failed. The only chance to make it work was to upgrade to Trebs, which required running all the way to Physics - at which time the Incas would've made it out of the Medieval period and started the whole thing over again.

The lesson here is that your Infantry and Archers can't take cities, and your Siege can't survive long enough to contribute if you're behind on tech. An AI with a tech lead is going to be very hard to dislodge militarily if they've paid any attention to fortifications.

I had much better luck in the next game when I skipped Liberty for Honor, brought on a Great General + Discipline, and kept technology tight and skipped the Catapult siege for Trebs. That gave me enough extra strength to avoid having my Trebs burned down in a single turn of city + garrison shooting.

It seems really important to get buffs on your Siege equipment if you want them to live in a fight to cut an advanced civ down to size. Honor is one route. Another could be to build them with Barracks and then farm the second promotion from barbarians to get Cover. I almost never used cover in Vanilla Civ - always opting for a bombardment bonus against cities instead.

Also, the tech progression between eras and unit groupings seems much better in the Ancient - Medieval eras on Standard. Even without a rush strategy there's time to wage at least 2 solid campaigns against comparably sized Civilizations before anyone runs out Gun Powder.

All in all I really like what I see. It's a sharp shift in tactics for the better, IMO.

- Marty Lund

Yes, I was somewhat surprised to find out that my cities hit harder even though the Oligarchy bonus had been cut from 100% to 50%. Even on tech parity, I don't think you can take a city with Walls without siege. Your units just get killed quicker than you can bring down the city's health.

[Villager720]

Anyone else getting an inordinate amount of jungle in their random maps? I'm talking jungle as far as the eye can see.

[Setis]

Originally Posted by Villager720

Anyone else getting an inordinate amount of jungle in their random maps? I'm talking jungle as far as the eye can see.

I've noticed that too, the map generator definitely seems fond of jungle now, at least on Pangaea Plus/Continents Plus.