Some comments after playing a bit

[LeroyJr]

I am thinking that my first game is just a victim of bad placement.

I am playing the Ottomans on Emporer level and got nothing but plains and dessert. A couple of grasslands by Istanbul and Edrine but nothing much else for population. Some sugar and oasis in the dessert. Luckily I shared a huge continent with the Arabs and expanded out to take most of it including the only horses and iron in the continent. I have one lake on the whole mass of land in which I have set down 35 cities. All irrigation coming from there and no rivers which kills my commerce.

Unfortunately the Arabs seem to want to declare war on me every 20 turns or so. Consequently I had to build a good deal of musketmen, pikemen and horsemen to beat back their assualts on my borders. Problem being that Feudilism and Rebublic are just about useless now if you have smaller cities. I can't afford to even man a force large enough to hold back the damn Arabs.

I don't know if they changed the Anarchy rules or not but have not managed to find a period of less than 7 turns for it yet. Both times I switched to Anarchy the Arabs attacked the next year. (Cheating AI) so for 8 years I had to battle with no production. I maxed my science to get to Military Tradition and figured the unit/structure I get nailed for in deficit spending would be worth it. Turns out now it sells off crucial things like all my barracks and temples in my major cities first instead of a useless library in an outpost like PTW.

First impression on the governments is not good as the maintenance cost is even to high to defend your civilization let alone maintain an offensive force. Maybe it is just because my civilization right now is not capable of large cities and has no rivers which makes it seem worse than it is. What is the difference between Feudilism and Rebublic now anyway? All I can see is Rebublic has me paying twice as much and no benifits. Certainly no reason to have 8 years of anarchy to switch too.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Leroy-
Republic has the commerce bonus, fuedalism doesn't. It depends if the commerce bonus is enough to offset the unit costs.

 

[Grille]

For upkeep cost reasons, conquest-republic has even increased my demand for slave workers.
In this regard, I like the new extra graphics set for slaves.

Agree that agricultural is awesome. I had an 'equatorial' starting location with quite a lot of desert tiles, but that was no problem with the Sumerians.
And an oasis wasn't exactly rare on top of that.

4 turns forest-chopping time (9 turns when planting, base turns in both cases IIRC) may be worth to practise enhanced forestry operations.

Not sure yet if a large crowd of these new scientists in far-flung cities could distinctly boost research.

About SGL: I played on regent and was thereby always ahead, so I could 'farm' them... (or I was just very, very lucky).
Now is the ability to pile up SGL (have more than one at the same time) an intended feature?

 

[Masquerouge]

Originally posted by rabies
Resources - were scarecer in my game as well. Made it much for fun. I controlled 50% of the world at one point, and realized that I did not have any coal in my borders. I was shocked.

Yeah I noticed that. Strategic and luxuries were not as abundant as before in my first C3C epic game. And since it was scarce for the AI too... Well it was the first time I had to wage war to gain resources ! So I agree, it was fun.

Another comment about the new specialists : the TP engineer is AWESOME for those cities with really high corruption. It produces two shields, no matter what. Now that the corruption is bugged, it's THE BEST WAY to build something in newly conquered cities. You multiply by three your building speed ! (ok, from one shield to three, but still !)

 

[tomart109]

Originally posted by LeroyJr
Problem being that Feudilism and Rebublic are just about useless now if you have smaller cities. I can't afford to even man a force large enough to hold back the damn Arabs.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't Feudalism give you 6 free unit support for every small town (and less for cities, etc - the opposite pattern of every other govt.)...?

I found (at least in the beta) that early on, when i had a lot of small towns, Feudalism gave me enough support-free units to enjoy whatever wars came around.

 

[LeroyJr]

I think my biggest problem was a crappy no commerce producing stretch of land. No rivers and a grand total of two spice for luxury so it made both Feudilism and Republic seem horrific because as a base I had no commerce. It took me 23 years of anarchy to reach Democracy (Despotism-Feudilism-Republic-Democracy) so not to gung ho to switch around to find out. Anarchy CXL out my free tech for the most part as Scientific.

I made a beeline for Steam Power & Sanitation so I could rail and build my cities up to get commerce and now in not a bad situation in Democracy.

Does anyone else have problems with the AI for all intents and purposes not trading with you? I can't even get an offer for Iron or Saltpeter let alone Spices or Insense. Another thing I noticed is more aggresive AI in demanding things or war. Been at war with someone of another most of the game although mostly those far flung things with no shots ever fired.

The resources do seem a lot scarcer. Thank god I have everything so far. Crazy game though. Playing on a Huge map with 11 Civs. My land area is 143,000 square miles and that is only good for 18% of the land and tied for first with the Romans.

In 143,000 square miles I have two oil, one coal, three iron, one horse, two saltpeter, five spice and two insense. So much scarcer.

I also do not think I have had a single "we love the Sultan" day in the entire game.

 

[Masquerouge]

Well in all my empire, that makes for 22% of a huge map, continental, large land mass, I have three elephants and two furs, two iron (one depleted so I'm left with one), one coal - that depleted, one rubber, one horse, no oil, no salpeter. Yeepee.
I can tell you I'm really anxious about aluminium and uranium.

 

[vanderbilt_grad]

Reduced resources are interesting … and not to the AI’s advantage. In my current Regent game only two out of five remaining civs have coal, me and the Hittites (currently the 4 place civ). This is a real blow to the #2 & #3 civs who are unable to railroad as a result. This would make invasions *far* easier at this stage of the game if I cared to do so.

Iron & Saltpeter were pretty rare too, leading to easy warmongering on my part early.

@LeroyJr, this may be a factor in the AI attacking you. You may have one of the only sources of Saltpeter in the game, and even though the AI can’t use it yet it wants it…..

 

[Masquerouge]

Yes, what put some balm in my wounds was to see that although I lack a lot of strategic resources, it's not bonanza galore at AI's place.
I think this scarcity makes the Temple of Zeus a really powerfull wonder... I was able to crush the ottomans with ancien Cavs only to reach his resources !

 

[Svar]

My general observations are limited for the epic game as I started one as the Iroquois because I wanted try the agricultural trait and haven't finished it yet. I started playing the conquests. My only period of anarchy lasted only 2 turns which suprised me and I really like the 2 new specialists. You really need to pay attention cycling through them. My first inclination was to always switch them to civil engineers for the 2 shields per engineer but the policemen may get you just as much in shields as well as additional commerce.

My observation for the conquests is limited to the only two but you really need to fully investigate the Civilopedia before starting any of them because each one is heavily modified from the epic game.

My current game is the Age of Exploration as the French for the second time. I just discovered that musketmen and musteteers have amphibious abilities. My goal in this game was to conquer the new world and maximize my score but I keep getting attacked by other civs many times when they are allied with me against previous foes.

I declared war against the Iroquois and had just eliminated them when the Aztecs attacked me. This was fine because they were the next on my list anyway. Before I could eliminate the Aztecs my allies the Mayans attacked me. Just before I eliminated the Aztecs while I was also attacking the Mayans my allies the Spanish attacked me. I enlisted the Portuguese against the Spanish and that lasted about 3 turns before the Portugese attacked me. This time I finally realized what was happening. The Portugese attacked a missionary who was fortified on a hill deep in the jungle of South America with a pikeman and a colonist. They both lost and the missionary was promoted to elite but all these attacks were caused by the AI mistakenly trying to move through a tile occupied by a missionary that is invisible to them. So all these wars are wars by accident.

It may be just luck but it appears that attacks by enemy units against hidden missionaries gives some kind of advantage to the missionary because the only loss to the missionaries occured when 2 Spanish Conquistadors went through the same missionary position and the second Conquistador finally eliminated the missionary.

 

[Slax]

Resource scarcity will make the techs that reveal them even more valuable. You need to be the first to know which city you need to take away from your enemy, and which ones of your own to defend with extra units.

 

[Vedder]

Re: the switch to MGL and SGL

I'm at work and can't try this right now but MGLs can rush small wonders right (and palaces IIRC)? Can you not use the MGL to rush a palace or forbidden palace, if you haven't built one yet, and then switch to the wonder?

If so, then I'm 100% in favor of having two kinds of leaders. You aren't discounted for playing a military game but those playing a peaceful game get a chance for a boost too.

 

[Grey Fox]

Originally posted by Vedder
Re: the switch to MGL and SGL

I'm at work and can't try this right now but MGLs can rush small wonders right (and palaces IIRC)? Can you not use the MGL to rush a palace or forbidden palace, if you haven't built one yet, and then switch to the wonder?

The regular Palace is probably a great wonder, and if you could switch it would be an exploit.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Svar
all these attacks were caused by the AI mistakenly trying to move through a tile occupied by a missionary that is invisible to them. So all these wars are wars by accident.

Ouch! That sounds like a bug, I doubt that's intended behaviour. It sure will limit the usefulness of invisible units.

 

[ethiral]

The F8 Screen

2) I don't like it being the default display for F8. Personally I most often want to see the score display (the old default) and I find it clumsy having to use the mouse after clicking F8 to get there. (Haven't found a keyboard shortcut.)

I agree with you on the default screen. I would prefer the old score display as well. Also I noticed that you can change the display by pressing 'S' in the F8 screen. (If that counts as a keyboard shortcut)

 

[SirPleb]

I played one of the scenarios today and want to share my impressions.

I played Mesopotamia, as Phoenicia, at deity level.

The scenario is beautifully designed and very enjoyable to play. It is an interesting combination of two things:
1) It has a "feel" just like playing a fun CivIII map
2) But many things are vastly different from the epic game. E.g. the tech tree is totally different, techs must be discovered for fundamental operations such as irrigation, units are different and have different ADM values.

I'm usually not fond of scenario type games. I like the CivIII epic game. But this scenario is so well designed and was so enjoyable to play that I intend to play the other scenarios too.

It even seems somewhat replayable. Different people will find it more or less replayable, and everyone will probably find some scenarios which interest them more than others. There is a fair bit of flexibility to play it over again differently, varying the Civ you use, the approach you use toward victory, and the difficulty level.

I didn't have any problem winning my first try even though I jumped in at deity. I was surprised by this, expected it to be much harder. I think the reason is that the AIs did not get their usual bonus starting units. At deity in the epic game each AI starts with a bonus of 12 military units, a settler, and a couple of workers. In this scenario each Civ seems to be preset to start with a few settlers and other units to get things rolling quickly. And it seems that the AIs don't get any extra units regardless of the difficulty level. At Demigod and higher levels, this makes a huge difference from the epic game. At these levels the AI gets one or more bonus settlers in the epic game, and that starting boost is a significant part of what makes those levels as hard as they are. The military unit bonuses which are given to the AIs at Monarch and higher levels in the epic game also make those levels a bit harder.

So I think that Monarch and Emperor levels will be a little easier in Conquests scenarios (at least, those which have preset starts like Mesopotamia) than they are in the epic game. Demigod, Deity, and Sid levels will be quite a bit easier than they are in the epic game. I think that Sid level may prove not too hard to win in the scenarios. (Vs. the epic game where Sid level is extremely difficult.)

Something which seems odd to me in the Mesopotamia scenario (and perhaps others) is the scoring. It isn't clear in how it is calculated nor how it is presented. The victory status screen while playing shows victory points. But they are not the same as the final score shown in the HOF. And that number isn't displayed anywhere that I can see if you continue the game after winning. I can't tell where it comes from. In my game I got 4660 victory points and had a final score of 8387 in my HOF display.

The game score is displayed in the game and in the victory screen sequence, and is calculated as usual (population, territory, (limit.date - victory.date)*difficulty, etc.) But the normal game score does not seem to be a factor in the HOF score. Nor does difficulty level I think (not sure yet.)

The best guess I have so far (based on a sample of one ) is that the scoring for this specific scenario is:

VictoryPointTotal + WonderVictoryPoints + TechVictoryPoints + Difficulty

I.e. the wonder and tech points get counted twice.
In my game: 4660 + 2175 + 1545 + 7 = 8387

Rather obscure. The introduction says something about victory points for wonders in this scenario being doubled, which could explain the + 2175 part.

 

[Grille]

By SirPleb:
Something which seems odd to me in the Mesopotamia scenario (and perhaps others) is the scoring. It isn't clear in how it is calculated nor how it is presented. The victory status screen while playing shows victory points. But they are not the same as the final score shown in the HOF. And that number isn't displayed anywhere that I can see if you continue the game after winning. I can't tell where it comes from. In my game I got 4660 victory points and had a final score of 8387 in my HOF display.

I think the victory points score mainly serve as a sort of a trigger (towards a game goal), rather than contributing to the HOF score.
I haven't studied all editor details, but I imagine that you could value the event of capturing a small-sized town much higher than the event of capturing a big metro (which would theoretically be somewhat contrary to the epic fashion of calculating the score) by assigning these victory points differently.

 

[Svar]

I'm in the middle of the Rise of Rome conquest and just noticed that when you capture an enemy city it retains its culture. That works for both the minor and principle civs. This has huge implications on strategy since when you capture an old princple civs city it could have over 100 culture and a nice cushion when the inevitable counter attack comes. It also encourages sea invasions where you land on an isolated coast one turn and capture the city the next.

 

[Grey Fox]

I think you might get a Wonder Victory bonus in the Mesopotamia conquest.

 

[SirPleb]

Nonetheless, the scoring for the scenario is confusing.

And I think (guesswork admittedly, but looks like the most probable explanation to me) it has a couple of bugs:

1) I think the difficulty level is being added in the score where it was intended to be a multiplier.

2) The scenario's documentation does not match the actual calculation. One or the other of them is wrong.