[GS] GS impressions/random observations thread.

[MarigoldRan]

I finally got to play a few hours in the evening, and while it is still early, my first impressions are good. I started off with the Inca, and wow...I had underestimated just how good they would be as a builder civ. Those terrace farms, which are available right from the start, gives an excellent early advantage if you get the right type of terrain.

Spoiler :

View attachment 517751

Have you yet to discover how good they are as a war civ, too?

 

[Red_warning]

Holy crap, it's expensive to maintain a modern army. An oil well adds 3 oil per turn and many of the modern units consumes 1 per turn. And as usual I never ever get any oil anywhere near me.

 

[leandrombraz]

A complete lack of barbarians is about to give me my first dark age since R&F was released. I saw both people saying that there's too much barb camps and people like me that didn't find any, so I wonder if the barbarian camp spawn is broken in a way that they spawn all around the same area, leaving some people without barbs and others with too much..


Edit: Noap. The elusive dark age yet again escaped my grasp. I recaptured a city I lost and built a holly district. Voilà, no dark age for me.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I think this is how it's supposed to work. Your home continent should be where you settle your first city, not where you currently have your capital. Makes perfect sense to me.

Nope, if you had watched the Phoenicia livestream then you would have known that this was something Carl did during the stream and was noted by Ed that the Move Capital ability changed the original capital when it came to domination victory and policy cards and what not. This was even available on Ed's twitter.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

A complete lack of barbarians is about to give me my first dark age since R&F was released. I saw both people saying that there's too much barb camps and people like me that didn't find any, so I wonder if the barbarian camp spawn is broken in a way that they spawn all around the same area, leaving some people without barbs and others with too much..

Luckily my lack of Barbarians was offset by lots of Goody Huts & City-States .

 

[AriochIV]

Is there any way to disable the disasters, and especially the Global Warming mechanic? That stupid Global Warming nonsense really ruins the end game, is seems it's only there for reasons unrelated to improving gameplay. Frustrated me enough in the early Civ games that I walked away from the franchise for over a decade. Not going to buy GS if there isn't a way to avoid that.

There is a 0 setting for disaster intensity, but I'm not sure whether this entirely disables the climate change mechanic.

 

[redfox85]

... what did they change to kill mods that a) put more tiles between starting civs and b) that forces cities to be more then 3 tiles apart. It seems odd that something so simple wont work. I've tried enabling it but still, it does not work.

 

[Eramas]

I am going for the Diplomatic Victory and it looks like it will be a long game. I haven't had a chance to get any Diplomatic Points so far (only one from the Statue of Liberty) and the game is still in the Industrial Era. Is there any way to speed it up? 2 votes per meeting every 30 turns sounds pretty harsh, considering you have to wait until the Modern Era.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Yay, finally playing!

Quick question, sorry if it's been answered elsewhere. Is there a way to see how many grievances it would cost to take a particular city?

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I was looking foreword to playing this evening but... it’s Valentine’s Day... sigh. (First World problem)

 

[Pistol90]

I am going for the Diplomatic Victory and it looks like it will be a long game. I haven't had a chance to get any Diplomatic Points so far (only one from the Statue of Liberty) and the game is still in the Industrial Era. Is there any way to speed it up? 2 votes per meeting every 30 turns sounds pretty harsh, considering you have to wait until the Modern Era.

I tried it as Canada ... (you can look it up in Your first Gathering Storm game thread) ... and failed. It is not that simple -- in the beging it looks like all you have to do is be patient and give yourself most votes for those 2 diplomatic points. But at the end Civs (even your allies) start voting option B to take one diplomatic victory point from you -- when you are near victory with 6,7 or 8 points. Only other way to gain Dip.Victory points is through Emergancy aid program and its simple , you just send gold or city projects: Send Aid.

My first try at diplomatic victory was really interesting, because I was at the bottom (3rd place from bottom of the list when it comes to score) --- no culture, no religion, almost no army, never took single city whole game (but i did tried), didnt even start to build space port ... and I lost just by margin of 2 turns , and option B being voted in World congress instead of option A

 

[teakbois]

Playing island plates as Dido. My intent was a naval domination but we all ended up as one friendly planet so Im going with that. I can neither confirm nor deny a city experiencing death by Bireme. That's why you don't build on a peninsula.

My first world congress gave me a free trade route. And I have an extra few from gov't plaza. So much GPT coming in, especially after Philip and I entered into an economic alliance and I got the 100% harbor adj bonus.

I lost an improvement to a tornado, but rising sea levels will not be my friend. Im looking forward to it.

To follow this up, I got hit with a 1000 year flood. Theater Square and all buildings pillaged by it, lost 2 pop. Asked WC for help just to see.
The result: every civ checked in to give between 2-9 gold plus 2 gpt. I was making over 500 gpt at this time...

 

[Sagax]

Finally in the game!

And......uhh guys? What's going on with my Settler lense?

Spoiler :

 

[teakbois]

Is there any way to disable the disasters, and especially the Global Warming mechanic? That stupid Global Warming nonsense really ruins the end game, is seems it's only there for reasons unrelated to improving gameplay. Frustrated me enough in the early Civ games that I walked away from the franchise for over a decade. Not going to buy GS if there isn't a way to avoid that.

Much like all the R&F stuff it could be better fleshed out, but at the very least its another part of the city planning phase because some flooding is inevitable.

So far I love the other disasters though. And they are pretty well integrated into the game, with some Diplo victory interaction for providing aid and some interesting risk vs reward.
Its early, but I feel the game is much improved with them.

 

[Cerilis]

Finally in the game!

And......uhh guys? What's going on with my Settler lense?

Spoiler :

View attachment 517765

It's pretty, that's going on.

 

[darkace77450]

I occasionally the logistics project (IZ project) in vanilla and R&F to grab some GE points when I one of the wonder-rushing GEs was up. Now that the gold granted by the project has been replaced by power output I'm not sure I can justify doing so.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

Volcano Alley:
Mount Agung, Krakatoa
--------------------------Mount Semeru----Mount Tambor

Possibly a little excessive.
There is another (Galunggung) between the former Indonesian lands and my homeland, and another (Hamp'atu) to my west. And WaynaPutina is 6 hexes Southwest of that. Oh and Mt. Merapi is west of Jambi a piece

Edit: Another Volcano, Kelud sits directly SE of Mount Tambora. That's FIVE volcanoes along a curved 6 hex chain. So far.


I've also evidently annoyed my neighbors. In my defense, Russia forward settled me. Underneath the elusive Chocolate Hills. That was going to be the extent of my conquests, then Ottomans and Indonesia joint declared on me. Indonesia wouldn't surrender their cities, and I didn't even know where the Ottomans were so...

Yeah. I'm annoyed at Eleanor, however. We were buddies until Norway dragged her into war. We had just made a good trade deal and everything!
Unfortunately, her border is showing two hexes south of Volcano alley here, and alas, I don't know where Harald is (there was a longboat centuries ago). I don't really want to fight her, because this is an absolutely love natural border.

 

[iammaxhailme]

A neighborhood in my city got flooded by climate change. When a district is flooded you can't repair it. Usually you can make mroe than one neighborhood, but it doens't seem to allow me to, becuase it just prompts me to fix the flooded one, which is impossible

 

[Archon_Wing]

Some general observations:

Unfortunately, the tech pace hasn't really changed. We got rid of outliers with chop overflow abuse but in the end Magnus dominates even as Mali. There is still no reason to leave resources. Though you may consider keeping jungles to keep droughts away. Pingala might actually make matters worse. I dunno why they even buffed him so hard in the first place.

The AI is pretty poor as always. They're really struggling with the resource system.

The resource system is pretty unpleasant and I spawned with only niter. Infantry requiring oil is a slap i the face too.

Power is sorta irrelevant thanks to the above, and I didn't really pay much attention to it. T3 buildings are still w/e.

Random disasters are really cool and aren't too intrusive. It's good to force you to pay attention.

The UI is still bad. Notifications are still garbage, but we have a queue, but it takes so many clicks.

The World Congress is excellent. Voting in to increase the production cost of military units was awesome as Mali, since I just buy units anyways.

Diplomatic victory, however, is not. In fact, it's pretty useless because you need to wait 30 turns between votes, with the exception of a wonder and some events. I had it at 8/10 but it would have taken 20 turns either way. Scaling needs to be better. Also, your own allies vote against you which really sucks; the only reason why they failed is I had way too much favor to block out all their votes. They did vote to make writing give more tourism, which accelerated my culture victory though.

Upgrading units from gold is still too effective.

Grievances are a much better and transparent system over warmongering.

Mali is pretty good, but rather terrain dependent.

Rock bands are annoying due to the high RNG factor. The other fact is I would have been better off killing off France/Cree instead of doing this stuff, so.... Concept overall is creative, but please remove the scaling cost.

Overall, it looks fun, and the disasters are implemented quite well, making the game much less montonous. But balance remains an issue and early game really hasn't changed.

 

[Leathaface]

I won a Culture victory, on Emperor difficulty, as Canada on turn 298 despite Computers now only giving 25% additional tourism and a late Civic giving another 25% boost to tourism. I was only able to research 2 Future era Civics and no Future era techs before the game was over.

I'm kind of disappointed TBH, I though the game would have lasted a bit longer. Plus I had Alexander next door who was displeased with me for around 75% of the game yet he didn't declare war on me. I felt like I could have very easily won a Diplomatic victory if I wanted to, the "send aid" competitions were no competition at all.

I didn't want to lose a Diplomatic victory so I invented a bit in those competitions yet I won with ease each time. And regards Climate Change, only 2 unimportant tiles got floored in my empire, though I was playing on Pangea.