German unique ability is overpowered and crazy

[vendur]

No, that ottomans suck worse isn't super relevant, I'm just pointing out that you have civs that are obviously better and worse, and this one is more midline...perhaps a bit toward the bottom.

I like ottoman more than bismarck. janissaries are power houses and you can fast tech to get them very qucikly.

Firaxis completely screwed the sheep on Germany. mediocre units and garbage ability. I don't know why they call Germany and upstart nation and then give them a UA that dates back to roman times. What about the teutonic order? What about hanseatic league? what about being the cultural center of europe for over a hundred years with beehtoven, bach, handel, etc. What about the leading the world in the sciences in the early -mid 1900s?

Pathetic.

 

[Airey]

as of right now, combat is extremely favorable to the human side.
any civ is easy on deity for warmongering.

marathon seriously? need even more advantage for warring?
about those early wonder (stonehedge, GL), what do you plan to do if you don't get them?

early rush, early wonders and huts? seriously?! Civ V deity sounds more like Civ IV prince.

 

[Ceterius]

marathon seriously? need even more advantage for warring?
about those early wonder (stonehedge, GL), what do you plan to do if you don't get them?

I deal with it. What would you build instead? Germany can afford to devote production time to wonders since it doesn't need to build military units or more than 1 worker.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

It doesn't even need to build the worker. You can steal them from City States easily enough and with the bonuses they get at high difficulties you get it much faster.

 

[R3dKnight]

If a nation like Egypt can't even beat Deity AI to wonders, how do you expect Germans to even do that?

It's pure luck at best. I rather build another spearman to supplement the attack force all the time if I want 100% warmonger in Deity. If this is in Marathon, too bad. It's a horrible game to play in Marathon because nothing's happening on the AI side with the severe production time. The AI cannot react, advantage is yours with initiative and skipping long production time with converted barbarians + gold buying, but honestly, where's the challenge in Marathon? I challenge you to do the same in standard pace and watch as the Deity AI settle and expand like a maniac, overwhelming your brute farming operations ruthlessly with iron working units in less than 50 turns.

 

[Ceterius]

If a nation like Egypt can't even beat Deity AI to wonders, how do you expect Germans to even do that?

It's pure luck at best. I rather build another spearman to supplement the attack force all the time if I want 100% warmonger in Deity. If this is in Marathon, too bad. It's a horrible game to play in Marathon because nothing's happening on the AI side with the severe production time.

Building spearmen would be totally useless because the constraint with the Germans is the support limit which causes -10% production penalty for each unit above the cap.

Rather build settlers.

 

[Celevin]

And this is worse than the ottoman empire how?

I hate hate hate the Ottoman Empire as well

It's a good looking idea, but didn't work out. I wish they'd trash it and give something a bit more evened out... It could be balanced perfectly over 1 million practice games with the Germans taking 1/18th of it, but I'd still hate it. I'm the type of person who wants abilities to be unique, and usable over the course of a whole game. Over half the civs accomplish this nicely, but the Germans and Ottomans fall flat on their faces.

Barbarians aren't around for most of the game like the designers said. Even then, I'd probably not like it.

 

[Ceterius]

Barbarians aren't around for most of the game like the designers said. Even then, I'd probably not like it.

Barbarians spawn during the entire game if the player takes over the entire continent, and most of the land remains empty.

With the -50% upgrade cost reduction in the honor tree, it's cheaper to promote barbarians than build units. The trait is great during all eras.

 

[Paeanblack]

It's laughably easy to beat Immortal or even Deity as the Germans. Especially with large maps, and slow speeds.

Just go Honor, and capture barbarian encampments while building early Wonders like Stonehenge and the Oracle in the capital.

That's false...at least on Deity, dunno about Immortal.

On a Deity large map, at least one AI is beelining those wonders. The AIs hit their first happiness-induced Golden Age and are starting Stonehenge when you have Calendar halfway researched, since they start with Pottery and research faster.

Even playing as Ramses going for Stonehenge on Deity with an ideal setup (two first-ring cows + marble + two hills + three forests) and a +1 pop ruin, a culture ruin, and a worker steal, you'll still be beaten over half the time.

The only way you get Stonehenge on Deity is if no AI tries to build it. That means either: fewer than the standard number of opponents, handpicking opponents, or restarting many, many times.

 

[Celevin]

Barbarians spawn during the entire game if the player takes over the entire continent, and most of the land remains empty.

With the -50% upgrade cost reduction in the honor tree, it's cheaper to promote barbarians than build units. The trait is great during all eras.

I have had games on standard settings from King to Deity where I've only seen a max of 3 encampments spawn on my land mass. Barbarians are there for all periods only SOME of the time, and sometimes not there at all.

Plus upgrading units is broken right now and you can expect it to be fixed. What's stopping me from just playing another civ, building warriors, and upgrading them instead? What's my real gain with being Germany over them? How much is 25 gold once in awhile in a mid game when I'm making 100+ per turn? I'll take another civ, take their special ability, upgrade like the Germans, and be better and more unique overall.

I would have to greatly skew game settings just so the Germans wouldn't sometimes be completely hosed.

 

[Lyoncet]

I won a few (epic continents emperor small cause my computer sucks) games way too easily with Germany specifically because I could wipe out my whole continent without building units. I admit I got lucky with camps (only got 2 of the first 6 or so brutes early on, but got 3 of 4 archers later), after which it was just a steamroll. Since at least on Emperor I've sworn off of horsemen since they trivialize the game to such a ridiculous extent, I think I may have to quit doing Furor Teutonicus rushes as well, since I've had just as much success with them while being able to ignore most military tech and build up my cities quickly, unlike horsemen which require a tech beeline with marginal economic benefits and completely constrain your build order.

The 50% element is a major potential hindrance, but once you get Honor, you should be able to find enough camps that law of large numbers will see you through. The other part that can dampen the ability is the map, since archipelago/small continents can pretty much nullify it, but since the AI sucks so much with those maps anyways, I can't see a) people using those often or b) losing out on FT making the game hard.

I have had games on standard settings from King to Deity where I've only seen a max of 3 encampments spawn on my land mass. Barbarians are there for all periods only SOME of the time, and sometimes not there at all.

Then our experiences differ greatly. What settings are you using?

What's stopping me from just playing another civ, building warriors, and upgrading them instead? What's my real gain with being Germany over them?

The upgrading part came from the fact that once you get civil service, your 7-strength barb spears become 10-strength landsknechts for 10 gold (5 if you have professional army). As for the benefit of FT over just building warriors, until each city has a queue for military and a queue for buildings/settlers, that will be a huge bonus. Plus once you start seeing barbarian spears/archers (doesn't take that long on emperor and up), you're getting a huge hammer boost per capture. All comes down to how many huts we see I guess, but I've seen so many every non-archipelago/small continents game that I have to think the 3 encampments per game is a fluke.

 

[Celevin]

Then our experiences differ greatly. What settings are you using?

I think I didn't get my point across correctly. It's not that I haven't used Germany's ability well, nor that I think it's weak. It's that it flops a good portion, and when it does, it's not fun.

Germany has some good starts, which players will obviously point out their games with. But a good portion of the time (50%?), their start is completely mediocre. Especially with the higher difficulty settings, there simply isn't enough fog of war for the ability to be used well. You also have to consciously not settle in a certain VERY large portion of the map just to use it correctly. Even then we're talking about really weird scenarios where you manage to create all this fog and not take advantage of it.

How many of you have actually had success with regular settings on Deity with Germany, and not have the game turn into a total rush with no mid to late game?

This ability is impossible to balance without standard settings, without playing Deity or any mode where the coms eat up the barbarians, and is only good for the first portion of the game.

 

[Huncowboy]

I don't buy it. I have never ever got a unit from just walking into a camp. I just went back and read the ability, and I doubt they would make that error. It clearly says you must defeat the unit inside an encampment.

I can confirm this. I have walked into empty camps that the AI emptied out before and still got a unit. May be a bug.

 

[Jediron]

Non-sense.

Germany is so easy, I stopped using them. Just because you cant see how to work barb camps to your advantage doesn't mean its a bad ability. How many barb camps do you need before you have an army that you cant afford.

So, you think it makes sence to use "bypassing tactics" to overcome a tactic, a tactic that's possible thanks to the great gamedevelopers ?

The game is flawed, in many wayes. Instead of crippleing my homosapiens gifted creative power, my brain: i choose to not play this game at all. Give us a game that truly challenge us, instead of a "bag of tricks" which, if you look from a distance to it, is one big joke.

owwait. I confess. I will stay playing it. But just for fun, not for the win. There's simply no challenge in winning for me, the battle AI sucks and alot of other things suck, things you see discussed all over the place here. So i take it as it comes , with all the flaws. And i use anything to my liking, if the game allows it. Not my fault that they "made it possible" that way. Game Over.

 

[Uranus Reamerz]

what ever you doubters are on ... The German thing works period

 

[Celevin]

what ever you doubters are on ... The German thing works period

This is not the point.

I could make a civ that has a special ability "At the beginning of the game, flip a coin, on heads you win, and on tails you play with no unique ability". It only occurs at the start, it either works or it doesn't, and half the time you feel like a gimped other civ. It's not fun. With Germany I feel the same way, with sometimes not seeing enough encampments to actually warrant the ability. Other times even if I have a good supply, Deity civs make short work of them.

If you have an opinion, explain it. Expressing it is worthless.

 

[Martin Alvito]

The map size will strongly influence your experience. I suspect it has something to do with the ratio of civs/land tiles. A small difference in that ratio could easily lead to a wide variance in the number of prospective barb spawns, since all tiles at the margin will be "legal" for spawns.

My observation has been that:

- Duel maps are crapshoots. Either you have some turf that the AI can't see with its units swiftly, or you don't. The shape of the map matters.
- Tiny and Large maps seem to offer a lot of elbow room. Encampments will spawn and respawn and respawn in the first 100 turns.
- Small and Standard maps tend to get spammed full of cities in a hurry.
- Huge maps tend to play more like Standard maps than Tiny and Large.

I'd guess that you're seeing widely different experiences due to variances in map size.

 

[Lyoncet]

I could make a civ that has a special ability "At the beginning of the game, flip a coin, on heads you win, and on tails you play with no unique ability". It only occurs at the start, it either works or it doesn't, and half the time you feel like a gimped other civ. It's not fun. With Germany I feel the same way, with sometimes not seeing enough encampments to actually warrant the ability. Other times even if I have a good supply, Deity civs make short work of them.

One 50-50 chance for a huge effect is hardly comparable to a number of 50-50 chances for a medium effect, because as you run into more and more huts your odds of having 100% success or 100% failure becomes essentially infinitesimal. I understand where you're coming from, but that's a completely unfair analogy.

 

[Celevin]

One 50-50 chance for a huge effect is hardly comparable to a number of 50-50 chances for a medium effect, because as you run into more and more huts your odds of having 100% success or 100% failure becomes essentially infinitesimal. I understand where you're coming from, but that's a completely unfair analogy.

It's completely fair. It's hard to see the complete absurdity in the Germans because it's a cool sounding ability, I mean, you're taking barbarians over, it's kinda cool. But it shares the same problems as my extreme example.

My entire point with that example is something can be completely "fair", yet still be a dumb idea. The German ability is cool sounding, and people like to win and that's why they like it, but it's a really DUMB idea.

 

[Roxlimn]

So, it's a not a good ability for a Civilization because "it's dumb?" What is this, middle school playground? There has got to be a better way to express that.