Scott Longbowman vs the World. Seriously What the Hell?

[Malecite]

Uh you couldn't win a conquest victory nearly as easily as you can in Civ 5. With 4 units you can essentially hold out against ANYTHING the computer sends at you. As opposed to Civ 4 when the stacks would pretty much mean you better have equivalent amount of units or a whole lot of bombers...

My problem is not that the game focuses more around combat, actually thats fine, I really love the new combat system. Things all go wrong when you realize the AI they designed for this game is incapable of actually playing it against a human player that is pretty much forced to exploit its ineptitude.

For those that think the happiness is an issue, your doing it wrong. If I see a city that has no value to me, and no strategic gain, I simply raze it. If I'm rolling along with my elites and I notice one that has say a luxury resource, its a puppet state. The only real cities you want to take are the ones with a) luxuries or b) their capital. You do this while your cities at the back pump out happiness producing buildings and you can easily manage a stable economy with only a slight negative populus. In the current game I am playing as England I have 16 cities but likely could have close to 30 if I didn't just burn them to the ground. You also have to make sure you are quickly connecting your new cities to your roads, which is usually easy with a plethora of liberated workers, afterwards you delete them to save gold.

Heres where my problems begin. You are NOT punished for essentially spending all your time burning down your neighbors, in fact this strategy gets you ahead technologically? What ever happened to the peaceful civs with the egg heads? Oh thats right... we removed governments, religion, and the complexities they offered for a quick "level up system" that is neither flexible or requiring of the player to adjust his civics to his game behavior.

At some point you will realize that the new Civ is all surface and no depth, and thats the main problem I have with it. The AI is in its infancy both diplomatically and militaristically so all the challenge/fun previously associated with a deft opponent is missing at the moment.

 

[Malecite]

Oh and for those of you that claimed you have won a cultural/scientific victory let me say this. Its simply impossible to do if your facing the 1 civ that has amalgamated his entire continent into a single culture making machine.

As an example, lets take the map where I had dominated North/ South America. I had a stable economy, most of my cities had research labs/every available culture building. I lost, turns away as the aztec won a cultural victory of all things.

Now why is that?

Well to start, he had about 4x the amount of cities and land that I did. Where as in the previous civs such bloated expansion so quickly would likely mean financial collapse. In this one its quite the opposite.

For every city I had that was making say15 - 20 culture and paying close to 30 gold in upkeep he had 4 cities producing 5 - 10 culture but paying far less due to the more numerous and cheaper early upgrades. In the end his 40 doubles my 20 and I lose, and so will you. Its simple math in civ 5:

More cities, without regard to the specialization or any other factors, will give you an advantage NO MATTER WHAT. The computer late game will also spend its entire super economy on building happiness/culture producing buildings. Plus it has so many cities that its science will likely dwarf your own.

If that doesn't seem silly/stupid/dummed/broken to you, then well... maybe I am just an old hand when it comes to the civ series, but I really cant find myself enjoying this any longer if thats the direction they want to head.

 

[CivFanMUC]

Large empires are actively discouraged.

They did the same with Civ:Col - remember?
The TAC-Mod then turned the game into a real "Colonization", that deserved its name.

Seems like we have to wait for the modders here too....

 

[Guardian_PL]

Oh and for those of you that claimed you have won a cultural/scientific victory let me say this. Its simply impossible to do if your facing the 1 civ that has amalgamated his entire continent into a single culture making machine.

As an example, lets take the map where I had dominated North/ South America. I had a stable economy, most of my cities had research labs/every available culture building. I lost, turns away as the aztec won a cultural victory of all things.

Now why is that?

Well to start, he had about 4x the amount of cities and land that I did. Where as in the previous civs such bloated expansion so quickly would likely mean financial collapse. In this one its quite the opposite.

For every city I had that was making say15 - 20 culture and paying close to 30 gold in upkeep he had 4 cities producing 5 - 10 culture but paying far less due to the more numerous and cheaper early upgrades. In the end his 40 doubles my 20 and I lose, and so will you. Its simple math in civ 5:

More cities, without regard to the specialization or any other factors, will give you an advantage NO MATTER WHAT. The computer late game will also spend its entire super economy on building happiness/culture producing buildings. Plus it has so many cities that its science will likely dwarf your own.

If that doesn't seem silly/stupid/dummed/broken to you, then well... maybe I am just an old hand when it comes to the civ series, but I really cant find myself enjoying this any longer if thats the direction they want to head.

Nice one, my thoughts exactly...

 

[UrkSpleen]

The game makes production difficult, and traditional civ approaches (expand, make a bunch of cities, grow) simply doesn't work well. Large empires are actively discouraged.

You do best with a handful of focused cities. One with hammers or a few with income to buy things with; either style works. A few good units, a general, and you're golden. Don't annex cities unless they are capitals/city states; in that case you can puppet them and annex them one at a time if you need the extra city to build more troops.

Thanks so much! I was taking a totally different, Civ IV esque approach where I would build a large empire, create lots of units, invade, and annex everyone. I guess I was playing this like Civ IV.