Recent content by dreamvirus

I've been really impressed by the patch changes. It's funny because if anything I'm finding it more difficult to win (probably because of all the cumulative nerfs to things like Horsemen etc) but I'm having more fun. The buildings are better - which means it's no longer a case of building 2 or 3...

It looks absolutely gorgeous, and I love the new gameplay mechanics, but there are clearly some balance issues that will need to be addressed in future patches. It's not taking away from my fun though. Finding it really hard to get my mind out of CivIV mode though. Also: it's killing my laptop.

"Interesting that the AI that many feel is the "best" is mansa Musa with the spiritual/financial combo." I think this might be due to the fact that the AI likes to change civics as soon as they have the tech to do so...so they lose all those turns to Anarchy, unless they are spiritual like...

On most discussions regarding civ traits I've found that the top ranked traits are invariably Financial, followed by either Organized or Philosophical, with some people preferring Aggressive, but very rarely does Spiritual get mentioned as one of the top traits. I agree with Financial being...

I can understand that, though. There are only a few ways to make the computer harder to play against: a) More units + bonuses - this is the cheapest, easiest way. b) Hard-code a whole load of "rules" - like, "Chop-rush axemen on a pangaea map", "chop-rush Lighthouse on Archipelago map", "Send...

"there's simply no way to get around the fact that as you get better and the game gets harder, war is a bigger feature." - I suppose I should really qualify that. You can sometimes get away with a peaceful builder strategy on the higher levels if you have the right map and a bit of luck - for...

I don't understand the complaint about warmongering being necessary. War is a hugely important aspect of the game, and the one where the human has the greatest advantage over the AI because we can form complex plans and strategies while the AI can only think from moment to moment. Humans also...

At first I had trouble moving up past Prince and Monarch, because I was being too much of a builder and very reluctant to make war. Now I'm consistently winning on Emperor because I've seen how to make proper use of war to win. Deity still seems like a million miles away but I'm enjoying myself...

I've been doing this for a while and there seems to be no downside, as long as you are trading like for like (health for health, happy for happy).

My problem was: I didn't have code of laws and couldn't research it. Even when all my units disbanded I was still in negative income due to the distant cities I'd conquered. I couldn't create merchant specialists. I would have had to gift the AI the cities I'd conquered just to get back into...

Hmm, now I feel like I asked a stupid question. So a strike happens when you have 0 gold and negative income, and will stop when you no longer have negative income? Man, I should have worked that one out for myself...ha. I was right to abandon my game. I still had negative income, I had maxed...

I need some information on strikes, because I don't understand them and I can't find anything in the manual or the Civilopedia on them. I just played a game with the Incans on Epic-Immortal, tiny world, and found myself neighbours with Caesar...yuck...so I spammed Quechas and after a while I...

Yup, if I'm being honest that's exactly the level I was at - I could win on Deity with a good start. On that level I used to just reload if I didn't see a river or a nice bonus like cow/wheat/ivory etc... :blush:

You're right, I'm not. I've been seeing war in too limited a way, as simply a way to gain extra territory or resources. If I have all I need, why waste my own resources in a war? Even on Deity in Civ3 I never started wars purely to choke the development of other civs. I knew about the...

OK, I just dropped a level to Prince to test out the advice in this thread about specialization and I've learned a whole lot. I achieved a pretty easy cultural win and was never in trouble for the whole game. My first city was my GP city - I got Stonehenge early on, before building any settlers...