Just finished my second game (both on prince, standard speed) and have a few thoughts:
(i) Religion: Huge thumbs up!
Implemented so much better than in Civ 4! If you have terrain that can make use of it and / or can nab a couple of powerful beliefs to boot, it can help your game enormously. Allowing faith to be used to buy great people late game is a great idea too.
(ii) Espionage: Another thumbs up. FWIW, I’m a huge fan of not having to move spies (ie. yet more units) around the map in a 1UPT world, which could of course lengthen end turn times. It would be nice to have an extra option though, eg. to sabotage / delay AI production. My only queries are whether (a) it’s a little too easy to steal techs and have them stolen (since stationing a super spy in my capital didn’t actually seem to prevent the AI stealing many techs) and (b) whether the AI gets some kind of bonus in espionage (since I’ve seen them all too regularly complete successful coups against CS I’m trying to influence). Perhaps I was just unlucky with the RNG or maybe they had terrifically able spies in place?
(iii) AI diplomacy: Have read mixed reports from other gamers on this issue, but I found it vastly improved over Civ 5 vanilla. Managed to make lasting friendships and engage in triangle diplomacy which greatly added to immersion. Although I also got denounced on a few occasions, there was, for the first time in my Civ 5 experience, some logic behind each denunciation. Great to see!
(iv) AI at war: Mixed reports on this one. At times I saw the AI do some very good things, like (i) try to keep units in some kind of formation to at least get a flanking bonus (ii) attack with ground troops supported by siege in the rear and (iii) correctly retreat to another city to heal and fight again when faced with losing a city. IMHO, the most obvious area needing attention is the AI’s use of great generals, which I saw the AI (i) bring unescorted to the battlefront (as some kind of scout) in my first game...right within the range of my troops and (ii) in my second game, leave sitting in a coastal city, when I was attacking their troops only 6 or so hexes away. Why would the AI not want to deploy its great general to give its troops a combat bonus? Still room for improvement here IMHO.
(v) AI city building and tile improvement: Saw significant variation in the number of cities built. In my first game, Cathy spammed cities like a plague of locusts whilst in the other Izzy sat on just three cities – even though there was some very good land just off to her west (same landmass), which contained a luxury (silver) she did not have. Perhaps there’s a need to tweak the AI to make it more inclined to settle land if it contains luxuries not already under its control, assuming the AI’s not going culture? Espionage meanwhile revealed the AI has a certain tendency to work unimproved tiles when perfectly good improved tiles are available.
(vi) Social policies: IMHO, social policy cost rises too rapidly based on city count, but that may just be my personal taste. Like the change to liberty whilst piety needs a buff IMHO. If anything, (and perhaps controversially) I’d be inclined to move naval tradition from commerce, perhaps into honor or as a swap with socialism (in order). Whilst moving socialism into the commerce tree might promote a more builder friendly game, moving naval tradition might also cripple the ability to fight mid game naval battles, especially as England. Perhaps something to look at in a mod. IMHO, the rationalism opener is also very powerful.
(vii) Happiness: In both games, resource clustering led to me not being able to settle perfectly good land early on without going into unhappiness. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky or maybe it’s what happens when you play on small maps (which my games have been on), but it does leave me with the impression that early game happiness needs a slight nudge higher, if only via a little extra happiness for settling additional copies of the same resource.
(viii) Pace of production / hammer availability. IMHO, this remains the single biggest issue with the game. Despite all the changes that have been made since Civ 5’s initial release, I still find myself with more buildings in the queue than I can attempt to build – and this despite (i) growing my cities and (ii) following a tile hierarchy of food > hammers > gold (to maximise hammers). Based on my second game (in which I signed few research agreements, just to test), G&K’s beaker / hammer availability (at prince) still favours beakers.....and, IMHO, when you spam RAs (as I did in game one), the scale of the imbalance is rather striking.
Whilst my playstyle, the maps I rolled (or just my inability to play G&K
) may be an issue here, my view is that an additional hammer from mines and / or quarries and / or lumbermills is needed well before chemistry, both to (i) promote a more builder friendly style game; and (ii) more importantly, at least help bring cities settled in a second or later wave of expansion online, given that Civ 5 doesn’t offer the gamer a Civ 4 slavery style civic to do just that. Fingers crossed, it’ll get added in via a mod - as it was in Thalassicus’ VEM for Civ 5.
(ix) Miscellaneous: Game runs much smoother than Civ 5. The only obvious bug of note was a few reminders from an advisor that my people were livid - when in fact happiness was well in positive territory.