Why don't I like BNW/Help me like it

[MantaRevan]

The the OP I'd recommend turning up the difficulty. I used to struggle in King but in BNW I can win a King game doubling the score of the last AI easily. I'm now playing in Emperor and the challenge/uncertainty is back.

It's true that another issue I had was that the gameplay felt too easy. I might decide to go back and try emperor and see if that presents more fun or challenge. That said, I've been resisting that because of a lot of the reasons I mentioned in the OP.

 

[Dissonance]

It's true that another issue I had was that the gameplay felt too easy. I might decide to go back and try emperor and see if that presents more fun or challenge. That said, I've been resisting that because of a lot of the reasons I mentioned in the OP.

A few things to know:
- Immortal gives all AI players a free Worker unit
- Diety gives all AI players a free Settler and Worker (please correct me if I'm wrong)

Emperor is, I find, the best balance as the AI players have huge bonuses but do not outright cheat. I played on King and the game got a lot easier instantly. I recommend Emperor for most games.

--

The logic of Immortal and Diety is that you start with a severe handicap, but can use your wits as well as AI's flaws to rise above in the long term.

IMHO, I find those difficulties involve restricted strategies and focused beelining of specific wonders/techs. I don't find that appealing.

 

[notyetsuperman]

How could we help you like it? No one knows your likes better than you. Case in point, Simcity. I was in love with the new Simcity Idea. What came out was a giant piece of dog crap. Even so, I tried to make myslef love it. I have uninstalled Origin and will never buy another Maxis game again.

The game is back and running well, no more doomsday botched release. But overall... yea, I don't play it any more.

Before any one calls me out for hi-jacking this thread....

Some games just don't fit a players style. Though in general I agree with the OPs experience in the late game. So I've created my own games and just try to be a in a good position before 1600 AD (or so). ... I'm notorious for starting games but don't finish once I have the upper hand (or am out of it).

 

[Buccaneer]

I am finding immortal to be a lot more involved - many more that my anal-retentive ways have to track and pay attention to. Apart from the Huns, there way too many DoF but I quite behind demographically. I don't know if i will win or lose, no clue at this time.

 

[Maxym]

Thank you for this thoughtful post, it makes a very good case for BNW.

I hope things are really as you describe, because that is the ideal way I would like AI to behave and force you to behave. My personal feeling is that they are too supine and the game not challenging enough, but I need to play more to find out fir myself.

I do have the similar impression as OP, BNW while having lots of cool parts and game improvements lacks the "just one more turn" addictive feeling that GK eventually acquired or rather had from the start. It was such a vast improvement over already quite evolved vanilla. I hope this gam evolves like the other ones did because the parts are there, they just need to come together to create a game that will enthrall me for years like GK did.

BNW changed the feel of the game significantly. Trade caravans/boats, rebalanced gold, Piety available at start and new factions make it play out very differently from G&K.

War has been changed completely. AI players are no longer psychotic in the way they fight. Previously, I find the game ended in two scenarios - everyone likes me, or everyone is sieging me. AI players engage in good diplomacy amongst themselves, and you have to do so as well.

Don't try to befriend everyone - pick your allies, and maintain that friendship. When declaring war, make sure you present it properly to the world - that is, don't break a Declaration of Friendship with war, and DO denounce beforehand. There's a reason the AI players do so. Bring a friend or five with you.

AI will not declare war at you randomly. They will prepare, try to gather allies, and will not always feel confident enough to attack you. This may be patched somewhat in the future, but war is no longer a guarantee. They WILL work to screw you over, though, from spies to missionaries to planting cities in front of your settler. Arguably, the AI also knows how to bait YOU into attacking it.

Massive spread of empires has been nerfed ---- and personally, I'm happy about it. You can't plop cities willy-nilly, and you can't go conquering every city you find. Cities impose a fairly severe 5% tech cost penalty - which is fine, if you can bring the city size up quickly and build as many science buildings as possible. But you need to balance it out, not expand too quickly, and overall be very aware of territorial limitations.

When it comes to late game, I seem to have a slightly different perspective on that. Late game is ALL about victory conditions. And while you are pursuing yours, so is everyone else. So instead of hitting ENTER watching the build time go down by a turn, you should be using money and/or military and/or religion to sabotage ANYONE who could threaten you.

In other words, you are ALWAYS at war. Economically, politically, culturally and scientifically. Amongst many other aspects.

BNW brings different mechanics, some hotly argued right here in the forum. However, it invites a broader range of gameplay decisions and I think that is fantastic. My only criticism is that with war political penalties, and tourism, the game shifted a lot of early-to-middle-game focus to victory conditions and I don't like that. I rarely play a game to completion. But then again, if I don't, it doesn't matter as much

 

[bison21]

I don't really feel like having music AND art AND literature AND so on actually adds anything to the game. Just having generic "great works" from the old Great Artist unit would have accomplished the same goal. I like the concept of theming bonuses, etc. but in practice it ends up feeling like busy work to me.

+1 this so much!
One of the reasons why I love Civ5 over Civ4 is that it has kept its design simple, and in terms of the new culture system, that was a step back.

 

[Dissonance]

+1 this so much!
One of the reasons why I love Civ5 over Civ4 is that it has kept its design simple, and in terms of the new culture system, that was a step back.

Interestingly, I actually feel the exact opposite - ignoring the tourism (which I both love and hate) effect of great works, I really like the fact that Culture has become so active. I realize that the actual mechanics are simple, but I feel much more involved now that there are multiple steps and aspects to cultural income.

EDIT: I AM A NINJA

 

[Teholb]

The intent behind GWAMs instead of just having a GA, was the give the player something to manage for culture victories. Otherwise it would get a little boring simply slotting things into generic slots for their +culture/tourism. Now we have great work swapping, you have to focus cities and their respective cultural niche (WAM) and manage building production for the GW slots.

I haven't used the system extensively, but I find more things to do is usually a good thing, up to a point. CiV has never felt like "too much" to me.

Edit: ninja'd =]

 

[gunnergoz]

How could we help you like it? No one knows your likes better than you. Case in point, Simcity. I was in love with the new Simcity Idea. What came out was a giant piece of dog crap. Even so, I tried to make myslef love it. I have uninstalled Origin and will never buy another Maxis game again.

You too, eh? I even contested the SimCity purchase and got my money back.

Anyway, back on topic. I think that Civ V with BNW has evolved away from the warfare focus that the game initially had when it was released, and is now clearly oriented more towards trade, culture and diplomatic victories, though domination is clearly still possible if you play it right - but it will still take skills in the previous three areas to pull off without everyone just ganging up on you.

Is it more of a challenge? Definitely. Is it for you? How much time do you want to invest in finding what it offers that floats your boat? If you are more of a warmonger than a trader or diplomat, you may be better off with sticking to G&K and a bunch of mods for variety and tuning the game to suit your style.

 

[MantaRevan]

+1 this so much!
One of the reasons why I love Civ5 over Civ4 is that it has kept its design simple, and in terms of the new culture system, that was a step back.

With only 2 BNW games under my belt, I will say that I agree with this side of things, and meant to mention this in my poorly written OP. I love the great works on paper. The idea of actually creating works of art and providing me with feedback is much more satisfying than just accumulating an abstract value. But with 3 different artistic GPs, there starts to be a lot of clutter with all the guilds and you end up 3 specialists that provide the same 3 culture and aren't terribly diverse when compared to other great people.

 

[Buccaneer]

But people wanted more things to do with culture and in order to keep the scale consistent, gwam are simply more slots find and fill. It's a way to mix and match to get more bonuses and that's cool. It can't be anymore meaningful than that or else the game will get bogged down. They're a nice, simple additions (even though they spent too much time naming and doing the graphics for all of these).

 

[pilot00]

Personally, I think it's a mixed bag in its current state - maybe a patch or two down the line will tighten things up a bit.

I agree 100%

 

[RealHuhn]

Seriously? I have a slower computer than that(i5 2500K, 8GB RAM, Radeon 7770) and the game is snappier than I've ever seen it. Do you have an SSD drive? That's the only thing I can think of though G&K crawled for me late game even with that.

Yes, I have an SSD but only for windows 8 plus other programs. In theory, an SSD should only shorten loading times, not processing time though.
We also might have a different interpretation of "snappy". In early game I click on next turn and I have to wait for less than a second before it's my turn again.
In late game, this isn't the case anymore. I haven't measured the time between turns but it feels slow, maybe 15-20 seconds. That's a lot in my book.

Anyway, this wasn't my true issue. It has always been like that. Now I have to play more late game turns before I win though. My scientists can't bulb a single technology although my science per turn is more than it has ever been in G+K. Just because I like to expand and build more than 4-6 cities.
I feel like the penalty per city is a good mechanic in general but 5% on standard limits expansion far too much. Needs to be towned down a notch.

However, let's not blow this out of proportion. This expansion added enough depth and new strategies to the game to more than make up for it.

But hopefully, more people will notice it's a bit too much and it gets fixed in a future patch.

 

[Matthew.]

I will need to play more games to see myself, but for some reason I get the feeling that a lot of players are biased towards 5% science penalty. People were crying for change before they even played a game. Could be that it is too much, but I'd prefer to see actual in-game examples, like RealHuhn points out, rather than calling it broken just 'cause.

Although my question for you, RealHuhn, is are your smaller empire games also running longer? I'm finding that my pacing seems to be about 25-30 turns slower than it used to be in G&K (The lack of bulk gold trades really does make a difference). Could be that the 5% is not to blame at all, and that is just the pacing of games in BNW.

 

[pilot00]

But people wanted more things to do with culture and in order to keep the scale consistent, gwam are simply more slots find and fill. It's a way to mix and match to get more bonuses and that's cool. It can't be anymore meaningful than that or else the game will get bogged down. They're a nice, simple additions (even though they spent too much time naming and doing the graphics for all of these).

Actually to their defense its more complex than that. In effect now you need to have three tall cities or a super tall one (which IMHO wont happen if you slot all three guilds at once when you build them) dedicated to the arts (wonders museums archeologists etc) in order to gun for cultural. If the AI was capable of taking account as they should of the evolving situation then it would have been extremely complex and tedious to keep up. If you can just try pulling off cultural vic in MP. Once the others see that you discovered an ideology first and/or you are reaching the critical mass of 20+ culture (nothing special all things considered) you are painted with targeting lasers for nuclear strike (an exaggeration since normally nukes wont be a part of the game yet, you banned Babylon from the game didn't you? ).

I will need to play more games to see myself, but for some reason I get the feeling that a lot of players are biased towards 5% science penalty. People were crying for change before they even played a game. Could be that it is too much, but I'd prefer to see actual in-game examples, like RealHuhn points out, rather than calling it broken just 'cause.

Been one of the critics that believed that this change was unnecessary (and playing at epic as my standard) I can tell you that there is some noticeable difference in the 4 city setup IF you go the well known route of acquiring a satellite puppet empire. Not that it is not a viable strategy, but you have the inherent science penalty of the puppets (along with their non controllable building que, although this is mitigated because I notice that less buildings are destroyed upon capture now) and the flat 5% penalty per city.
That said, it isn't something to really fret about. With the right management a science guy still comes at the top and will outclass the rest. Science is flat pop x building multipliers still so a large pop by any means equals more science. That didn't change.

Although my question for you, RealHuhn, is are your smaller empire games also running longer? I'm finding that my pacing seems to be about 25-30 turns slower than it used to be in G&K (The lack of bulk gold trades really does make a difference). Could be that the 5% is not to blame at all, and that is just the pacing of games in BNW.

I understand that this for another user but might I chip in, regarding the gold? You will find that what time you lost at the start is regained at an alarming rate once the appropriate buildings and trade routes kick in. In fact I never produced the flat income in G&Ks that I do now, and by extension it is not unheard of, to have a tall empire on a 'researched and bought' planing strategy. That speeds up the finish turn exponentially.