10 cool things in civ5 article - 17th Sept.

[V. Soma]

Here it is.

Interesting bits:

about buying units in the city:

If you've got the cash to burn, you can basically buy every single building in a city on the same turn. Note that you can't buy multiple military units in one turn. The first unit will fill up the city's garrison slot, so you can't purchase additional units until that first one gets out of the way.
Which it won't be able to do until it gets its movement points next turn.

strategic resources:

Note that you need these resources not just to build units, but to "power" them. In my most recent game, I had a fleet of ironclads terrorizing the Chinese coast, fueled by coal sent to me by my steadfast allies in the city-state of Copenhagen. When Copenhagen was conquered by another civilization and my coal level was suddenly negative 3, my ironclads fought at half strength. Ouch.

pillage...:

in Civlization V, a pillaged tile retains a smoking damaged version of the improvement. It won't have any effect on the tile,
but you'll be able to repair it much more easily than you'd have to rebuild it.

air recon:

in Civilization V, you'll never launch another recon missions. Instead, aircraft are assumed to be running recon missions every turn,
which is represented by giving them a six hex visibility range.

 

[anandus]

I thought this was interesting as well:

Units get experience when they're attacked. You don't have to initiate combat, or even win it, to get experience. In fact, you can park an army within range of enemy fire, say from a city. Then, assuming your unit is tough to enough to soak up some damage, you can farm the ranged fire for experience points. Which makes the healing ability that much more useful.

 

[Cilpot]

I really like the change to pillaging.

 

[Knightly_]

I like point two and four. The second one prevents you from using strategies like to buy a strategic resource from another civilization for an incredible amount of money, then crank out 5 units and then cancel the deal. The last point is good due to gameplay comfort... i cant remember how often i sent 5+ air units on recon mode because they were all in one group

 

[MrGameTheory]

Here it is.

Interesting bits:

about buying units in the city:

If you've got the cash to burn, you can basically buy every single building in a city on the same turn. Note that you can't buy multiple military units in one turn. The first unit will fill up the city's garrison slot, so you can't purchase additional units until that first one gets out of the way.
Which it won't be able to do until it gets its movement points next turn.

stretegic resources:

Note that you need these resources not just to build units, but to "power" them. In my most recent game, I had a fleet of ironclads terrorizing the Chinese coast, fueled by coal sent to me by my steadfast allies in the city-state of Copenhagen. When Copenhagen was conquered by another civilization and my coal level was suddenly negative 3, my ironclads fought at half strength. Ouch.

pillage...:

in Civlization V, a pillaged tile retains a smoking damaged version of the improvement. It won't have any effect on the tile,
but you'll be able to repair it much more easily than you'd have to rebuild it.

air recon:

in Civilization V, you'll never launch another recon missions. Instead, aircraft are assumed to be running recon missions every turn,
which is represented by giving them a six hex visibility range.

Thanks for the information.

 

[Lancor]

1) Don't pay the ferryman
No more loading/unloading troops! Rise of Nations introduced the idea of naval transport by having your military units turn into little boats when they hit the water, and then turning back into army units when they hit the beach. No one missed having to babysit a bunch of empty transport ships that would only be used once every few centuries. Civilization V borrows the same idea by automatically giving your units a trait called "Embark" when you hit a certain tech. This lets them turn into boats whenever they need to cross water.

This wasn't clear in another thread too. Now we know for sure.

 

[DalekDavros]

I like point two and four. The second one prevents you from using strategies like to buy a strategic resource from another civilization for an incredible amount of money, then crank out 5 units and then cancel the deal. The last point is good due to gameplay comfort... i cant remember how often i sent 5+ air units on recon mode because they were all in one group

On the flip side, it opens up the opposite strategy in which you sell your strat resources to another civ and then cancel the deal after they've cranked out a bunch of soon-to-be useless units.

 

[DalekDavros]

"Which reminds me of one of my favorite things about playing the Arabians in the modern era: they get double oil income from any source."

Looks like either the manual entry for Arabia is wrong or they were using an old build. I really hope it's the former.

 

[Rexflex]

Note that you need these resources not just to build units, but to "power" them. In my most recent game, I had a fleet of ironclads terrorizing the Chinese coast, fueled by coal sent to me by my steadfast allies in the city-state of Copenhagen. When Copenhagen was conquered by another civilization and my coal level was suddenly negative 3, my ironclads fought at half strength. Ouch.

I like this in a scary way. There is so much more at stake with protecting resources and city states providing such resources. In Civ IV on a countless number of occasions I have made little effort to protect a resource that might be under threat when I believed my existing forces were more than enough to finish off the enemy before replenishment would be required. Knowing that even my existing forces would be adversely affected by the loss of a strategic resource will make me think a lot more about the consequences.

 

[Iceciro]

Needing to secure resources like that is pretty awesome. One could see a smaller civ beating out a larger civ because they sent a raiding party to smash the resources, then sent their 100% str iron-needing units to crush hordes of 50% str iron units

 

[PieceOfMind]

Personally I don't think the whole idea of xp farming is cool at all but most of the other things I agree with.

For example, suppose you have naval superiority over a civ you're at war with. If you can keep moving ships into range of their city to get bombarded, you can keep earning the xp while (presumably) the city does not earn anything.

 

[anandus]

On the flip side, it opens up the opposite strategy in which you sell your strat resources to another civ and then cancel the deal after they've cranked out a bunch of soon-to-be useless units.

I was thinking the same thing. In that way you can sabotage a civs construction progress as they will use up construction time for semi-useless units instead of usefull stuff.
It calls for interesting strategies.

 

[Thorn]

Personally I don't think the whole idea of xp farming is cool at all but most of the other things I agree with.

For example, suppose you have naval superiority over a civ you're at war with. If you can keep moving ships into range of their city to get bombarded, you can keep earning the xp while (presumably) the city does not earn anything.

Yeah, the xp farming doesn't sound right to me either.

 

[V. Soma]

Yeah, the xp farming doesn't sound right to me either.

but how can it be denied?

 

[Tennyson]

but how can it be denied?

Give cities a 1 in 8 chance of totally destroying a unit?

 

[CreepyD]

Well against a human opponent they would see it and just not fire at you..
Not sure if the AI will be able to see that happening though.

Ah beat me to it, there you go, that seems like a good reason not to do it.

 

[Lancor]

It only works against the AI.
When you are at the point of using smaller civs for farming combat xp, then your game is most likely not a challenging one... using this might only be viable for future wars, rare situation. And this kind of "exploit" was also possible in Civ IV.

 

[Ihmemies]

When you used gold to buy something in Civilization IV, it went through the production queue. In Civilization V, buying things is completely independent of the production queue. If you've got the cash to burn, you can basically buy every single building in a city on the same turn.

That's nice. Fill a new city with buildings if you have the cash Like walls/castle to provide additional protection immediately, granary to jumpstart growth etc.

 

[Tennyson]

That's nice. Fill a new city with buildings if you have the cash Like walls/castle to provide additional protection immediately, granary to jumpstart growth etc.

Insta-buying courthouses and temples...

 

[PieceOfMind]

It only works against the AI.
When you are at the point of using smaller civs for farming combat xp, then your game is most likely not a challenging one... using this might only be viable for future wars, rare situation. And this kind of "exploit" was also possible in Civ IV.

This kind of exploit in civ4 was fairly difficult, and had more risk involved.

How do you suggest civ4 players used this exploit, anyway?

Also, of course it could only work against the AI. I didn't realise anyone was under the impression we were discussing mp.