Did You Ever Have a Game....

[docbud]

Where no matter what you do, you just don't catch a break??

I just rage quit a game, and let me tell you--I was enraged.

Playing as Venice, Pangea, Prince level. Had a pretty decent start. On the coast next to mountains, lots of crab and fish, and marble. Sweet start.

I sent out my scout and warrior to check out ruins, and the ruins sucked. Most of them showed me barb encampments. Not a single thing worth while. And I found about a half dozen ruins.

My warrior finds a barb camp, and there are three units. Two attack. My scout finds one the same turn, and same thing--except just two attack. I spend several turns having my units run away, but when they run, they run into another barb unit. Both scout and warrior were surrounded.

Rather than give the AI the satisfaction of killing my units, I deleted them!

So now I am defenseless but I've got my city and I rush buy an archer, and have my worker. I have a good city defense with the mountains and a choke point, so I figure I'm safe for a while. Have my worker mine the marble and work my sheep.

Suddenly three barbs show up and invade. Pillage everything, and then kill my archer.

I rage quit at that point.

I don't know what happened. I only play at prince level, and I have a pretty good understanding of the game. But I don't know how this happened. It seems the barbs are relentless.

Usually I can deal with them, but I've never had a game go like this. And as a note: This all happened by turn 52 on standard speed.

Anyway--I'm just curious as to if anyone else has been in a situation where you just can't win? That the deck is stacked against you for some reason? That the Civ Gods have preordained your fate?

 

[I_qua_I]

Barbarians have been changed in BNW. They now seem to pose much more of an actual threat. I love how they are now (I play on Prince too.) Sometimes you just get unlucky though I've found it usually better now to keep at least two units near the capital to protect against barbs. I try to pull my warrior back from exploring once my worker looks like it'll pop soon.

You're right about the barb-reveal ruins though. They really suck!

 

[docbud]

^^^I hear 'ya I_qua_I!

Am playing as Venice now and the damn barbs are annoying.

And I'm ticked off with the sensitivity of my mouse and this game. I select my composite bowman to shoot at a barb, and suddenly my worker is moved. I think my neighbors think I am a maniac as I was screaming and shouting at the top of my lungs when my worker suddenly moved into barb range.

And in my previous game, I was trying to bring my units back to my capital--but suddenly all those barbs started chasing and attacking.

doc

 

[Otheon]

I don't understand how they killed your archer. He should have been inside your city, where they can't hit him and you can range attack with your city bombardment and the archer while building another warrior/archer. In BNW, you're going to need more than one military unit to take out an encampment now or one stronger one(like a composite bowman upgraded from a goodie hut). Otherwise, pull your archers back inside your cities and fight defensive until you can build up more military units to fight them in the field.

 

[Teholb]

The last game I played today gave me this feeling. I started out as Morocco in a dense jungle. I had four grass plain tiles, and three forest tiles (two of which were Calendar luxuries, so had to cut down that production . . .) within the three workable rings. It was an intensely unforgiving and slow start. I felt like the only thing good about that game, was beelining for universities and having a godly Science output. That felt amazing. But the rest of the game went terribly and I felt like I'd completely wasted time when I should've just resigned at first sight of all those damn jungle tiles.

 

[ptoss1]

Every game.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Rather than give the AI the satisfaction of killing my units, I deleted them!

They're machines, they can't feel emotion

Although, seriously, for barbs, it's better for them to have to take damage because they won't be able to heal after it.

Suddenly three barbs show up and invade. Pillage everything, and then kill my archer.

That sucks, but why was your archer out of the city?

 

[docbud]

My archer was out of the city because I was scouting the immediate area a few tiles outside of my city borders. I moved the archer onto a hill, and that's when the three barbs appeared. I tried to retreat him back to the city, but they swarmed all over him.

I was a few turns away from my second archer being built, which I had planned on keeping in the city.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

^^^I hear 'ya I_qua_I!

Am playing as Venice now and the damn barbs are annoying.

And I'm ticked off with the sensitivity of my mouse and this game. I select my composite bowman to shoot at a barb, and suddenly my worker is moved. I think my neighbors think I am a maniac as I was screaming and shouting at the top of my lungs when my worker suddenly moved into barb range.

And in my previous game, I was trying to bring my units back to my capital--but suddenly all those barbs started chasing and attacking.

doc

My mouse doesn't seem to agree with BNW either, it's really annoying.

 

[docbud]

^^Yup. I really hate it when you keep clicking on a unit, but it won't select. The game is adamant that I am to move the unit it selects. Once I do, then I can pick and choose my units. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it's annoying.

 

[Gucumatz]

I don't particularly mind as much when I accidently move a unit to the wrong place in singleplayer...

But when it comes to Multiplayer... a stupid missclick like that can cause me to rage (Never quit though ). Playing against AI you can normally recover against these things, but with humans its a bigger deal

 

[NameUndisclosed]

Back in G&K, I decided to try my hand at a large Earth map game. I played as the Celts, and spawned in central Europe. After some exploring, I met the Aztecs - Tenochtitlan was in the Caucasus region. As my scouts continued east into Siberia, meeting Byzantium along the way, Montezuma declared war and captured Dublin, which I had settled east of what would be Greece in our Earth, on the north shore of the Eastern Mediterranean.

After some time (during which I settled Cardiff on Great Britain), Montezuma declared war again. I hadn't been taking chances, though - I had built up an army. I recaptured Dublin, liberated Nicaea for the Byzantines, and captured Texcoco, north of Tenochtitlan, giving it to Theodora. After this I made peace. As this war raged on my scouts were exploring the world, and they had discovered the seven other civilizations - Egypt in the Indian subcontinent, America in Southeast Asia, Polynesia in the Russian Far East, Ethiopia in sub-Saharan Africa, Japan in northern Canada, Spain in the continental U.S., and Carthage in what would be Brazil in our Earth. I became fast friends with them all - we were united by our mutual hatred of Montezuma.

The Aztecs declared war on the Byzantines, this time wiping them out entirely. Then they declared war on me a third time. They had begun planting seedlings around Europe - Atzcapotzalco in Malta, Malinalco in Iberia, and various other cities around the Mediterranean Sea - so I had many fronts to defend from their superior forces. Nonetheless I persevered, liberating Nicaea and capturing Texcoco once more. This time, though, I kept the city. After holding off the Aztec hordes from the city for a while, Montezuma offered white peace, which I happily accepted after he spent the whole war demanding all my cities for peace.

For a while now many civilizations had been locked in war with the Aztecs, hating Montezuma just as much as I did - Egypt, America, Ethiopia, Spain. But the only civilization that was really successful was Polynesia. Polynesia had become a runaway in this game - boasting the most land and cities, the most advanced tech, and the largest military. They effortlessly took Aztec cities, and I cheered them on all the while.

Then Washington informed me that Kamehameha was plotting against me.

I couldn't believe it. After so many years of friendship with Polynesia, and so many millennia of having a crippled empire by virtue of being near the Aztecs, this was how Kamehameha chose to repay me? As he captured the three cities of the former Byzantine Empire, keeping all of them (and even razing Adrianople), Kamehameha denounced me.

I began gearing up for a Polynesian invasion, watching with bated breath as Kamehameha captured Aztec cities around the Mediterranean and in Asia Minor. He had already wiped out Japan effortlessly and was now storming through the lands of the mighty and terrible Aztec Empire. I didn't see how I could stand up to his sheer strength, even with all four of my cities on constant military focus.

I have yet to actually see that war begin - I sort of ragequit after I witnessed the Polynesians' treachery.

 

[CornPlanter]

Suddenly three barbs show up and invade. Pillage everything, and then kill my archer.

How is it even possible, was your archer outside the city for some incomprehensible reason?

 

[Ryoga]

Ugh... to be honest I never keep my archer inside my city in early game, rather I keep it over a hill near my borders to quickly attack the invaders.

Now it never happened to me that my archer was killed by barbs just because of that. Of course three barbarians can kill it, but all three at the same time popping from nowhere? Before I could see them? It's hardly possible I say.

In that case I certainly would bring it to safety and quickly build/buy another archer or a spearman.
It would still suck pretty bad. I've had three barbarians invade my city at the same time before though, but from different directions.

 

[PhilBowles]

I came very close to rage-quitting in an Indonesia game on Emperor because my early cities kept getting ravaged by barbarians and my resources razed, so that I was at one point sufficiently low on happiness that rebels spawned. Needless to say the barbs also precluded trade. I was past Iron Working before I could create a defence, but when I did I managed to go on the offensive and push the barbs out.

It felt like it took forever, but was fewer than 50 turns all told and I went on to win the game - it actually gives a pretty good sense missing in earlier versions of Civ V that your civilisation really does struggle against the odds to get off the ground, only to eventually marginalise its former aggressors (and eventually treat them as archaeological curiosities). So it was very frustrating to play through, but rewarding to look back on.

The moral of the story is to stick with it - barbs will rarely do permanent harm in themselves, since they don't take cities, units can be replaced, and improvements repaired. All of which may set you back relative to the competition, but being badly hit by barbarians early in the game isn't necessarily going to cost you the game. Rage quitting always will.

I couldn't believe it. After so many years of friendship with Polynesia, and so many millennia of having a crippled empire by virtue of being near the Aztecs, this was how Kamehameha chose to repay me? As he captured the three cities of the former Byzantine Empire, keeping all of them (and even razing Adrianople), Kamehameha denounced me.

In BNW it seems I'm always getting intrigue telling me that whoever I'm spying on is plotting against me. Usually it's harmless - I tend to respond by asking to renew a DoF, denouncing a common enemy, or supporting their motion in the World Congress (or, more aggressively, by bribing someone else to go to war with them to keep them occupied), as well as building a few extra units to keep them occupied, and the notifications will go away for a while. Sometimes I do nothing and nothing happens anyway.

"Plotting" is usually an early warning - it means you have time to repair relations (which can often be done with a single extra positive), while "building up forces for an attack" means the civ is thinking about actively going to war and "launched an attack" is the stage where nothing can be done to prevent war.

 

[GKShaman]

This is why even as a Tradition player I open my 2nd or 3rd policy as HONOR helps kill the threat as it starts. Use my starting warrior and my scout turned archer or purchased archer to kill camps as they spawn. Gets me a ton of culture and the gold is nice.

Protects my routes and also gets me influence with the CSs!

 

[NameUndisclosed]

In BNW it seems I'm always getting intrigue telling me that whoever I'm spying on is plotting against me. Usually it's harmless - I tend to respond by asking to renew a DoF, denouncing a common enemy, or supporting their motion in the World Congress (or, more aggressively, by bribing someone else to go to war with them to keep them occupied), as well as building a few extra units to keep them occupied, and the notifications will go away for a while. Sometimes I do nothing and nothing happens anyway.

"Plotting" is usually an early warning - it means you have time to repair relations (which can often be done with a single extra positive), while "building up forces for an attack" means the civ is thinking about actively going to war and "launched an attack" is the stage where nothing can be done to prevent war.

Hmm, interesting. I'd never considered that the different wording of the intrigue would mean different levels of deterioration in relations. This'll be useful to know in the future.

I still don't know what I did to Kamehameha, though, besides existing.

 

[docbud]

Ugh... to be honest I never keep my archer inside my city in early game, rather I keep it over a hill near my borders to quickly attack the invaders.

Now it never happened to me that my archer was killed by barbs just because of that. Of course three barbarians can kill it, but all three at the same time popping from nowhere? Before I could see them? It's hardly possible I say.

In that case I certainly would bring it to safety and quickly build/buy another archer or a spearman.
It would still suck pretty bad. I've had three barbarians invade my city at the same time before though, but from different directions.

Yeah--I would have thought I would've seen them sooner, but I didn't. I had scouted that area earlier. But since it was beyond my city limits, another barb camp had spawned and I didn't know it was there until I crested the hill. And once I got to the top of the hill, I was out of movement until the next turn. There was one barb in the camp, and two outside of it. Two attacked and the third exited the camp and came at me. My archer took a lot of damage, and I retreated. But the next turn they attacked again. And that was that.

I've never been in a game like that before. I mean, barbs were everywhere, and raging barbs was not turned on.

Anyway--I'm not complaining as it was interesting and ended quickly, and thought I would share my experience of a game where it just seems I was doomed from the onset. I probably could have kept on playing, but with the barb distraction, I lost a lot of turns I could have used for production.

 

[Aaron90495]

@NameUndisclosed Don't jump the boat too quickly! If someone's "plotting against you," that in no way means they're gonna attack you; it just means they're considering it. In my experience, they only attack about a third of the time when they're "plotting."

 

[sennomulo]

I think the barbs were changed to make the Honor opener more valuable. Even if you want to spend your early game building rather than fighting, it's definitely something you need to consider. Not only do you get to see where the barb camps are, and not only do you get a combat bonus against the barbs, but you get culture out of each kill to help you get to that other policy you were going to take instead of the Honor opener. With the barbs the way they are in BNW, it's actually pretty nice.

I like the way they re-did the social policy trees. Now it's not so important to focus on one tree (though that strategy can still be effective depending on your goals). Opening up two or three of the early trees is often a good idea, depending on the game.