Gods & Kings: Introductory Guide

[Andulias]

The thing with espionage in G&K is that there's no actual cost to you involved, besides risk and opportunity cost flowing from that. It's not like you actually have to invest in anything to reap the benefits of espionage, or even that you have to produce something like espionage points in order to perform actions. This may be a reason why some of those things may not fit into the current espionage system (though not saying that they couldn't).

Easy fix - barebones Espionage (meaning, the way it is now) gets unlocked automatically, however more advanced tactics come into play by teching, building some sort of a Spy Academy lol or otherwise investing some gold in addition to the tech reqs that were already listed.

 

[MadDjinn]

Wow, guys, the work you've done here is amazing. Quick question on Religion: the Great Prophet threshold is what on Standard? And does it go up each time someone founds a Religion?

it's 200 faith for the first GP, then 300/500/800 for the next set (and up from there).

only the pantheon (starts at 10 and goes up by 5 faith/pantheon founded) goes up based on others.

 

[Ulthwithian]

MadDjinn: Is the GPphet cost Fibonacci in cost (starting at 300)?

 

[Varelse]

A segment on the new Civs would be cool.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I also want to say how fantastic this thread is guys (Camikaze & MadDjinn). You're definitely making my wait for the expansion that little less painful to bear ;-).

Aussie.

 

[MadDjinn]

MadDjinn: Is the GPphet cost Fibonacci in cost (starting at 300)?

starting at 200, yes, at least for the first few (so technically 'no' as a long term sequence).

I forget the exact costs atm, but once you pass the 800 faith one, I believe it changes to a different sequence (hits 4000 pretty fast). It's the same for the great people that you can buy with faith. They start at 1000 faith (beginning in Industrial) but then rise rather rapidly.

 

[Gali]

Great people boughtwith faith start at 1000 faith then increase by 500, 1000, 1500, so it goes 1000, 1500, 2500, 4000 etc.

the counter is separate for each type

 

[joncnunn]

Is there a screen shot of the new social policies somewhere?

 

[labrynianrebel]

Mercury rotates.

 

[Buccaneer]

Just spent the last hour going through MadDjinn's tech tree and social policies videos. I can't tell you how awesome they were, been looking forward to learning about two of my favorite things of Civ5 and there's no one better to explain these.

 

[MetaSkipper]

Can someone post a full list of all the changed policies? My speakers are broken and "transcribe audio" on YouTube is less than useful.

 

[Baleur]

Great thread, but i must say this is absolutely ridiculous..

"You can either tell them you’ll do as you please, in which case you incur an additional penalty, or you can apologise and promise not to spy on them again, in which case you won’t receive an additional penalty, but if you’re caught spying on them again in the future."

"If you bluntly ask them to stop spying, you will incur a diplomatic penalty, whereas if you let the transgression slide, you receive a diplomatic bonus; the AI is pleased that you are willing to forgive them."


So if you spy on the AI and gets caught, you get a penalty to their relationship if you tell them 'meh, we spy on whoever we want'. Sure, fair enough. But the AI does NOT get any penalty for asking you to stop!! Now, if you catch the AI and ask them to stop, YOU incur a relationship penalty!! But if you say 'oh its quite allright' you don't..

This is ridiculous, basically hardcoded game mechanics to make the player be bullied by the AI.. Since we can't even play on equal terms. The AI can ask the player to stop, with a diplomatic penalty if we dont stop. But the player can NOT ask the AI to stop, getting a diplomatic penalty ourselves just for even asking.
I think it's quite a reasonable demand to ask that someone stop spying on you, how the hell does that translate into a diplomatic penalty for the one being spied on, when the AI itself has the right to ask the player to stop without recieving any penalty itself.

So unbalanced, so unfair..
This is why diplomacy in Civ 5 always falls flat and feels gamey as opposed to dealing with other leaders. Because there are weird artificial lopsided rules. So if we wanna be peaceful to the AI we can't even defend our own cities from espionage, we can't even ask them to stop spying on us. Ridiculous. Bah..

 

[Camikaze]

If you steal a tech from the AI and they find out, of course they're not going to be happy with you! I think it would be a little odd to give your relationship a bonus because you were successful in stealing from them. On the other hand, if the AI steals from you, you, as the victim, have the opportunity to turn a positive out of it and make the AI like you more by being cool about it. Really it works the same both ways. If you steal, the AI will be angry, but if they are forgiving, you'll like them more, whereas if they steal, you'll be angry, but if you forgive, they'll like you more. Similarly, if you tell an AI to stop spying yet they do so anyway, you are bound to not like them as much, just as they won't like you as much if you tell them to stop spying. The issue here is that you are a human who makes decisions independent of an indexed diplomatic scale, so how much you let an AI stealing from diminish how much you like them is entirely up to you, and whether you continue trading with them is as well. Short of forcing you to keep track of your own diplomacy points and mechanically base your own decisions on that basis, I'm not really sure what your point is? I mean, if you want to balance in the sense you seem to be talking about, you could institute a house rule that forces you to no longer trade with AIs that have spied on you.

Also, given that espionage overall is currently unbalanced in terms of making it too easy to make friends, the point is lost somewhat.

 

[sukritact]

This is great! Should be enough to keep me entertained until I get the expansion pack!

On a barely related note, you used my logo! YAY!

 

[Buccaneer]

Because you guys did not even give a hint that you're in the beta test group .
Else: Well done .

My assumption that Mad and Cam et al got a version 2K gave out to reviewers (a few weeks ago?), in time for them to put together the great writeups and videos.

 

[MadDjinn]

My assumption that Mad and Cam et al got a version 2K gave out to reviewers (a few weeks ago?), in time for them to put together the great writeups and videos.

check the credits.

 

[juxtapose519]

Thanks for the overview. I was tired of reading reviews that said "diplomacy is better" and "there are more options to improve relationships with city states" but didn't go into any more detail. This was very helpful.

 

[The_J]

My assumption that Mad and Cam et al got a version 2K gave out to reviewers (a few weeks ago?), in time for them to put together the great writeups and videos.

check the credits.

the manual tells you:

Frankenstein test group:
Alexander Strub
Andrew “ainwood” Inwood
Anthony “Ztaesek” Seekatz
Bibor Kiraly
Bob Thomas
Camikaze
Dale Kent
Dan “DanQ” Quick
Daniels “Solver” Umanovskis
danthrax
Didier “Arcan” Gagnière
Elliot Schroeder
Frithjof “Nikolai” Wilborn
Gloria “Nolan” Carson
His Majesty Chris Withers
Jacob “xienwolf” Turner
Joe “snoopy369” Matise
Joey “jdog5000” Durham
Kelly “yin26” McLaughlin
MadDjinn
Onno “donald23” Zaal
Paul “vexing” Grimes
Paweł “PawelS” Strzelec
Peter “Gyathaar” Pettersen
Pfeffersack
Radek “vondrack” Vondracek
Ryan Lord
Sam “SamBC” Barnett-Cormack
Scott “DTA” Forehan
Steve “WarningU2” Warner
Stewart “MMC” Rice
Thalassicus
Xavier Wynns

 

[oddtail]

So... correct me if I'm wrong, but in a multiplayer game, you can pledge to protect every single City-State, increase your resting point of influence, and risk nothing whatsoever? Because obviously you don't get a "diplomatic penalty" with other players, whether you decide to actually help out the CS or not.

I know multiplayer is not the focus of the game, but unlike with Intrigue being missing from multiplayer, I think this is a bad decision. This way, multiplayer does not merely lack an option that SP has. No, the game is different on a basic level - everyone's influence point is automatically higher than normal.

The easiest way out would be "either you break off your Declaration of Friendship with the bully, or lose the Protection bonus", which would work in both SP and MP, due to DoF being important for other things. I hope they change/add it in the patch. I doubt it though.

 

[Steve2000]

Great overview - thanks a lot. One minor thing that threw me:

New City-State types
There are two new types of City-States (in addition to the current Mercantile, Militaristic and Cultural); Religious and Mercantile.

Shouldn't it be "in addition to the current Maritime, Militaristic, and Cultural"?