redmosquito
barbarian bear
I get it now. Firaxis is run by AI. They have no idea what is fun and what is boring
There are more ways to play besides horse rush or ICS, and I think a lot of people undervalue the ancient social policies.
The three ancient trees are designed for different starting goals. Tradition for building wonders and a large capital. Liberty for rapid expansion. And Honor for warmongering, obviously.
+1 food gives me a large capital? That's the problem with Tradition. You start off with: Here, have some nothing!
I think oligarchy has some use, but generally I'm not seeing a lot worth having on the Tradition tree playing at immortal or deity levels. I'm not saying there are no strategies other than rush (warriors/swords work too) or ICS, but I don't know what they might be.
So if Tradition isn't any good (please convince me otherwise), that basically leaves you with Liberty (ICS/REX) and Honor (rushing) or a combination of the two. I don't play below iImmortal level because it's too easy for me. If Tradition is good at prince, then fine, it should stay as it is, but I just don't see how that +1 food compares to cheap settlers or find the barbarians.
I think oligarchy has some use, but generally I'm not seeing a lot worth having on the Tradition tree playing at immortal or deity levels. I'm not saying there are no strategies other than rush (warriors/swords work too) or ICS, but I don't know what they might be.
The way I see it, the game has basically four viable strategies
The way I see it, the game has basically four viable strategies:
Obviously there are more than four viable strategies, since I always win on Emperor by a wide margin, applying self-defined handicaps, and use nothing remotely resembling any of the four you mentioned. I assume you mean four "optimal" strategies, but you single out the fourth as not being as strong. So let's say three.
Are all three more or less equal, or are there really one or two "optimal" strategies? (Don't ask me. I gave up ICS and REX with Civ 3, and have never tried them on Civ 5.) Whatever the number, "optimal" presumably means beating the AI as quickly as possible, rather than by as high a score as possible, or any other self-defined victory goal. So if your goal is to race yourself with the same long-established strategy over and over again, I would agree that your already limited "optimal" options have just been reduced. That's the downside of playing that way - any rules shifts threaten to upset the "optimal" apple cart. To me, on the other hand, most rules shifts only create more variation.
Obviously there are more than four viable strategies, since I always win on Emperor by a wide margin, applying self-defined handicaps, and use nothing remotely resembling any of the four you mentioned. I assume you mean four "optimal" strategies, but you single out the fourth as not being as strong. So let's say three.
Are all three more or less equal, or are there really one or two "optimal" strategies? (Don't ask me. I gave up ICS and REX with Civ 3, and have never tried them on Civ 5.) Whatever the number, "optimal" presumably means beating the AI as quickly as possible, rather than by as high a score as possible, or any other self-defined victory goal. So if your goal is to race yourself with the same long-established strategy over and over again, I would agree that your already limited "optimal" options have just been reduced. That's the downside of playing that way - any rules shifts threaten to upset the "optimal" apple cart. To me, on the other hand, most rules shifts only create more variation.
I suggest you replace viable with optimal. Almost anything is viable, even up to Immortal, in the sense that you can follow it and win without too much difficulty.By viable I just meant that nothing else comes close in power or speed.
I believe pi-r8's referring to what's pretty much required to beat the game on immortal & deity, or at the very least keep up with the AI on deity. Emperor is a whole lot easier, because the AI isn't starting with 2 settlers, 2 workers, 3 warriors, 1 scout and several more techs like it does on Deity. Thus the AI on emperor only has 1 city until it builds a settler, so doesn't crank out troops, or blow through the techs as fast.
The yardstick for CIV is not multiplayer on quick settings - multiplayers are just a tiny fraction of the total CIV players (probably way less than 1%) and to balance CIV around short MP sessions would simply be illogical.
The yardstick is single player, standard settings, all difficulty levels. that's where the game needs to be balanced (without taking away "fun factor"). On those settings, ICS is a beast because the AI doesn't punish the player like he would be in multiplayer. Horse rush is also a beast because the AI cannot defend against it effectively.
By viable I just meant that nothing else comes close in power or speed. Those strategies just leave everything else in the dust. Of course there's other ways you can win- the civ V AI is so bad that you can win without any social policies at all, like Alpaca is demonstrating now. But the economics of the game are highly favorable to one of those strategies.
I'm not sure which strategy is really optimal- it depends on what your definition of optimal is I guess. If you just want to win as quickly as possible, I'm guessing that a horseman rush with honor can't be beat. If you want a peaceful victory, I think the strategy #1 is fastest on deity (see Martin Alvito's thread for details) but strategy #4 is fastest on emperor and below (see the fastest settler spaceship thread). strategy #3 doesn't really win as fast, but it does set up the most powerful empires.
The changes are nice, I think the community as a collective was wondering when OP Horsemen and Maritime CSes would be nerfed. Good step in the right direction. Now to nerf puppet states. At least slightly. Unhappiness from puppeting is fine, but do make social policies cost at least a BIT more when puppeting, seriously. Otherwise peaceful Gandhi will never win cultural in a reasonable time, esp. when his civ bonus relies for efficacy on NOT puppeting. -_-
2)The "REX, then build" strategy where you build about 15 cities as fast as you can, but then stop settling. Libraries and universities with scientists will carry you forward in tech extremely fast. Freedom and rationalism/secularism are the policies you want here. This is probably the fastest way to win a spaceship or diplomatic victory on higher levels.
If they patch it so that you can't save policies, they're pretty much killing strategies 2 and 3, leaving us with only pure rush or pure ICS (unless you can micromanage very carefully to circumvent the rule). The game is simple enough as it is, we don't need them to take away any viable strategies.
The other problem with realism is that you can make an argument that almost anything is realistic. I think it is far easier to get agreement on what is fun than what is real. As pointed out, it's already not real by default.It's a freaking TURN-BASED COMPUTER GAME. How much more unrealistic can you get? Focus should be on playability, not unachievable "realism".