I'm so old that I can remember when there were numerous voices insisting that the PC would die quickly, replaced by terminals connected via token ring networks to a mainframe.
If the automation was somewhat eccentric before the expansion it's positively Caligulan now!
This may be a somewhat facile observation: but in my two warm up games so far I've sent out a few units on auto-explore - obviously not something you'd ever do in a serious game. If the automation was somewhat eccentric before the expansion it's positively Caligulan now! One guy wandered endlessly round and round the same CS until I had something like -40 relations, another put out to sea and spent a millenium cheerfully circumnavigating an inconsequential blob of arctic tundra, has anyone else experienced this kind of behavior?
Ok, here are my first impressions after finishing my first game;
Sweden, Large map, Continents, King level (I usually play on Deity but wanted to have it easy..)
Diplomacy: Much improved. Still lack options, but the AI now feels smarter and are not as suicidal as it used to be. Still some very weird denouncements though...
I picked Freedom and suddenly every one that have picked the same wanted to be friends. VERY NICE! I love that feature! The game feels much more realistic now and it opens up a lot more options for war, peace, trade and diplomacy intrigue.
But as i said... it really needs more options!
I had my first backstab in a long time in my last game, so that feature's still there - Isabella attacked while I was (tortuously slowly) finishing the Huns.
Religion: I decided to not invest heavily into religion in the early game, but somehow managed to found my own anyway. Found it pretty fun and it really gave me something to do, which is never wrong in this otherwise very feature poor game.
It didnt have much impact on diplomacy though, if any really. At least i didnt notice anything except Ethiopia that didnt like me for spreading my religion to their cities. :
I've noticed no diplomatic effects at all, unless Isabella's eventual attack was prompted by my sending in a missionary a long time earlier (my religion didn't catch on, and she seemed happier with Babylonian Islam) - there were no religion-related tooltips.
War/Combat AI: War/Combat AI is very nice. Everything feels very balanced and the AI is performing better than in any other Civ game so far. Scouting seems broken though since my auto-explore scout got stuck everywhere. That dosnt matter to me though since i 99% move my own units, but it might piss some people off.
Naval combat was also OK in my first game. The AI surrounds you now and gangs up on your units. I had a city state take out a whole fleet for me. Didnt really expect a city state to have 4 privateers... you should have seen the look on my face when i noticed it... "wtf...?!" Very cool.
I've found CSes very much more passive now - in past games my CS allies would attack on my behalf, or at least pick off isolated enemies near their borders. Wittenburg and Belgrade were both allied with me against the Huns (who weren't too far from Wittenburg), but neither did anything despite having available units.
One oddity about the combat AI I've noticed is that strategy hasn't been upgraded in line with changes to units in at least some case. The Huns would replace composite bowmen or horse archers (which made it extremely hard for my early-game units to get close to Atilla's Court, surrounded as it was by forests) with trebuchets, just as it would have in vanilla - but which did less damage to my melee attackers due to the changes in siege effectiveness in G&K.
Espionage: Not as good as i thought it would be, and clearly the weakest part of the expansion. Its impossible to keep relations with city states now. I focused my whole game trying to do their quests and get influence with them, but found out that as soon as i got an ally there would be a coup and i would loose it one or two turns after.
I haven't got far enough to see it in action, only just entering the Renaissance before quitting my last game due to Isabella's backstab. But it looks rather limited in options. From everything I've heard here it sounds as though coups may be too easy to successfully incite; I love the idea in principle.
I really like the expansion. Here are my notes, good and bad.
1. Tech tree needs to be somewhat refined as it progresses. I found myself having advanced to the modern age without having researched Steam Power yet.
Tech stealing in general really balanced out the game though, and was very beneficial for the AI. Keep that as it is.
I've noticed no diplomatic effects at all, unless Isabella's eventual attack was prompted by my sending in a missionary a long time earlier (my religion didn't catch on, and she seemed happier with Babylonian Islam) - there were no religion-related tooltips.