[GS] GS impressions/random observations thread.

[Pietato]

2 hours later...still trying for that Mali desert start...

 

[DWilson]

I am now undertaking my hardest challenge yet: getting a desert start as Mali.

Play a TSL Earth map, worked for me

 

[Pietato]

I GOT ONE! Now to find out I am alone on a tiny island.

I was on a large continent with zero barbs, and 4 CSes which died before I met them.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I GOT ONE! Now to find out I am alone on a tiny island.

I was on a large continent with zero barbs, and 4 CSes which died before I met them.

Thank Goodness. I thought I was the only one that couldn't get an appropriate starting position to save my butt.

Three Hungary starts without a City State in sight on Turn 30 - 50.
Two Inca starts without a Mountain within 10 tiles.
Still getting every fourth start in Tundra - and haven't even tried to play Canada yet.
Two starts as Maori and took 15 turns or more in each to find any land bigger than a 1-tile isolated island - and then found a coast that was solidly lined with City States and Civ's and literally not a tile that could be used to found a City.

So far, ever since Vanilla, I have averaged 5 or more Restarts in every single solitary game before I find a start position that is in any way appropriate for the Civ I'm trying to play. This is long past ridiculous and well into Insulting. Worst case actually was some time ago, when I restarted a game as England 9 times and never got a start position within 4 tiles of a coast. I'm afraid to try playing Dido: I'll get your Mali Desert Start in the middle of a large continent with nothing wetter than an oasis as far as the eye can see . . .

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Play a TSL Earth map, worked for me

Wish I could, but knowing the map before I start takes all the fun out of Exploration - it's also why EU IV isn't much fun any more: after 3 - 4 games I know where most of the Provinces are, can't get excited about 'revealing' them in the game.

 

[Pietato]

Two starts as Maori and took 15 turns or more in each to find any land bigger than a 1-tile isolated island - and then found a coast that was solidly lined with City States and Civ's and literally not a tile that could be used to found a City.

Pretty sure the game does not actually allocate the Maori any space.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've had a few instances where getting the Eureka for the tech gave me 99% of the tech cost instead of 40%. Not complaining, but I can't figure out why.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Anyone else have a bug where you get era score for your civ uniques after a reload? I've been playing my Inca game, and I obviously got era score when I built terrace farms and the mountain tunnel. But I've loaded up my game, and the next terrace farm or tunnel I build I get an era score. Then no more. I then load it up for a third time, sure enough, I get era score. It's like the game keeps thinking I'm building them for the first time every reload.

 

[Karmah]

2 hours later...still trying for that Mali desert start...

Didn't read previous posts, but did you set your world to warm (or hot can't remember the exact adjective).

 

[Starwars]

Man, been playing Elanor for a bit... I must say that I didn't expect the loyalty pressure thing to be strong enough actually flip citystates.

 

[knighterrant81]

First Gathering Storm victory - Culture Victory on Emperor as Maori, Continents, Standard size, turn 241.

Starting in the ocean is kind of fun, and not having to research sailing techs actually kinda plays into my delayed-naval style a bit. Of course, Toa are totally overpowered. This felt like a Prince game. I'm not sure if they need a nerf or not, but they are very strong.

The grievances system is interesting. I like that you can conquer parts of enemy civs in defensive wars without the rest of the world hating you until the end of time. One strange part is that as you conquer a civ, everyone gets angrier and angrier, until you wipe out the civ, there's no more negative modifier for grievances against another player, and suddenly everyone is happy again?

"Natural" improvements, like Forest and Jungles count for the Flight bonus to tourism, which means Flight is pretty incredible for the Maori on a Culture Victory path. I don't know if that's new or not, maybe I just never noticed in R&F because by the time I won a culture victory I had chopped everything down...

They've split the Computers tourism bonus and put it on a bunch of different techs. I like this change, but it still seems like everything else you do for a Culture Victory doesn't matter - just beeline for those flat percentage bonuses.

The resource system is a slight nerf to timing pushes. Its a little harder to upgrade 6+ units at once.

Rock Bands are kind of fun but are very confusing. I'm not sure if I'm helping or hurting!

Thank you for the baseline UI improvements, Firaxis. This game has always had a philosophy of "we want players to look at pretty buildings instead of numbers" which is frustrating. It is better, but I want more charts and tables. There are a bunch of things that are hard to find still. Archaeological vs. Art museums that are in progress, for instance. Or tourism modifiers. Maybe an actual breakdown of tourism?

I'm glad they're adding stuff to the end of the game...too bad the player still wins by the modern era so the new stuff doesn't matter that much.

The Maori in particular encourage multi-continent conquest and use of the colonization bonuses. This is the Civ that England wishes it was. By the end of the game, my colonies (read: all of Scotland and a large chunk of Poland) were much more productive and influential than my core cities.

 

[BenitoChavez]

The Canadian cities had three or four other cities packed close behind adding to loyalty, including Ottawa. I never ran any bread and circuses there either, and that would have sped things up somewhat I'm sure. I also think that I neglected to move my first great works to the border cities once I built the requisite buildings and instead just let them fill up as I gained Great People, which was pretty quickly but still probably not as optimal if I'd moved the early works as soon as I could.

I played half a game last night with Eleanor to test that my strategy wasn't just a fluke. The game didn't go quite as well as my first one but I still managed to flip all of Noraway's cities except a few out in the middle of nowhere, and started flipping Scotland's main cities before I had to finally go to bed. I even managed to flip a city-state I wasn't even trying to get

Did you use combat to take over the AIs, or Eleanor's ability? I think it's often best to combine combat with her ability, but I tried a game just using peace, and that's where I ran into difficulty, even with Divine Spark, zealous forward-settling, etc. Didn't realize conversion helped with loyalty pressure--is that covered in the Civilopedia anywhere?

I took cities purely using loyalty. I occasionally got sucked into a war but never used military units to take a city, just for defense and pillaging.

It's probably in Civilopedia somewhere. I just remember the patch notes from a while ago saying religion now affected loyalty and you can see the loyalty drop if you start converting cities. It's not much, just -3 loyalty but it's something.

 

[agonistes]

So I decided to stop sailing around the world long enough to found my first city as Kupe. Deity, huge, island plates. Founded it at turn 30 next to a natural wonder, and between some city states. Fortunately my circumnavigation meant I had a golden age before I even settled, had 1 emissary in 11 city states (5 cultural), and had uncovered a vulnerable Mali. Culture was easy to catch and overtake the AI, but science was a struggle. Eventually won a culture victory. Anyway, here are my thoughts:

The Maori
- I do not think the map reserves space for the Maori, which means you have to cram in somewhere, and will most likely have to war with someone.
- The Toa is overpowered, which is good due to needing to war to actually get cities.
- The Marae is insane, and even works on flood plains. You need to rush flight if you are going for a culture victory, though. Rush conservatin and spam forests.
- You will not get a good faith pantheon as the Maori.
- Generating science can be a pain in the ass.
- Coastal turtle cities are O for O-some.

City States
- Auckland was made even stronger, and the AI knows this.
- Cardiff is fantastic for powering a coastal empire.
- The AI zergs certain city states, meaning you can cheaply suzerain others.

AI
- The AI is using a lot more ships, though they still suck with them.
- They still like killing CSes.
- Their wars make more sense now.
- Eleanor hates me.

Issues
- Great Admiral charges suck even more now, because your Ironclad will have -20 to combat and be unable to heal due to a lack of coal.
- Roads are completely messed up.
- Climate change happens too suddenly, and from TROOPS. It does not do enough damage, etc either.
- Linking carbon sink to the IZ is moronic. My forest spam did NOTHING.
- Rock bands are very random. Turn it up to 11 and indie rock are overpowered.
- Pillaging is ridiculous, as expected.
- I had 5 uranium on the entire map...

How was Auckland changed?

 

[Morningcalm]

I played half a game last night with Eleanor to test that my strategy wasn't just a fluke. The game didn't go quite as well as my first one but I still managed to flip all of Noraway's cities except a few out in the middle of nowhere, and started flipping Scotland's main cities before I had to finally go to bed. I even managed to flip a city-state I wasn't even trying to get



I took cities purely using loyalty. I occasionally got sucked into a war but never used military units to take a city, just for defense and pillaging.

It's probably in Civilopedia somewhere. I just remember the patch notes from a while ago saying religion now affected loyalty and you can see the loyalty drop if you start converting cities. It's not much, just -3 loyalty but it's something.

Alright, I'll give Alienor (Eleanor) another try, but so far I've found her troubadors lacking. Religious conversion with -3 is not insignificant I guess; that's like three Great Works.

 

[Uberfrog]

Tier 4 governments really hurt your diplomatic relationships. -40 relationship modifiers when you (or they) switch. All us democracies had been getting on so well, but then I unlock digital democracy and it's frowny faces all round, at least til they catch up. Fortunately I'd scored some alliances by then so they were stuck with me for at least a few more turns.

Also having just finished a game, Diplo victories are painfully slow and getting those last two votes can be like getting blood from a stone.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Tier 4 governments really hurt your diplomatic relationships. -40 relationship modifiers when you (or they) switch. All us democracies had been getting on so well, but then I unlock digital democracy and it's frowny faces all round, at least til they catch up. Fortunately I'd scored some alliances by then so they were stuck with me for at least a few more turns.

Also having just finished a game, Diplo victories are painfully slow and getting those last two votes can be like getting blood from a stone.

Yeah it sounds like they have to do some tweaking, eh? Certainly the forums have convinced me it's not something I want to try any time soon.

 

[Sagax]

Yeah it sounds like they have to do some tweaking, eh? Certainly the forums have convinced me it's not something I want to try any time soon.

Related: I see no reason why one would ever pick Digital Democracy. If the goal of T4 governments is to focus your efforts on a specific VC and end the game, then this one fails to do so.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

In my current game, as Maori, Engleanor is isolated on a peninsula behind a clump of city-states. If she manages to flip those city-states we are all in trouble. But otherwise I think she is safely contained.

In my first game I had only one companion on my landmass, so there was no backlash when I conquered them in the Ancient Era as I am wont to do.

So imagine my surprise when I conquered Brazil after having met nearly all the civs on the map in my Maori game, and they all denounced me for it. Apparently the free warmongering in the Ancient Era is gone.

So I beelined the Toa and waited for declarations of war. But most of them calmed down eventually. Now there's just Gorgo to my South and Engleanor at the far end of the landmass who are upset with me.

Speaking of Engleanor again, I'm not sure she built much of a military. When my Scout got around to clearing fog in her vicinity, there were several huts left unplundered.

 

[Sagax]

So imagine my surprise when I conquered Brazil after having met nearly all the civs on the map in my Maori game, and they all denounced me for it. Apparently the free warmongering in the Ancient Era is gone.

Grievance system in action. Ancient free war is gone, but the hate from it decays rapidly now.

 

[Uberfrog]

Yeah it sounds like they have to do some tweaking, eh? Certainly the forums have convinced me it's not something I want to try any time soon.

I had a good early run and had accumulated 6 points from two elections and the Statue of Liberty. Having seen the other thread, I knew to hold off on getting Seasteads and Global Warming Mitigation until I'd scored the next election win, so I didn't face a coalition of B votes from the AI.

The problem is, you can only hold off for so long. There are 30 turns between sessions. I pump my favour in, but tie with Pericles, so miss out on one election. Climate Accords come up, and I have been an environmental terror, so I need to research Global Warming Mitigation to perform Carbon Capture. Before the next session is up, I literally run out of things to research which aren't Seasteads. Despite my best efforts, I am on 8 VP.

In the meantime, and to curry as much favour as possible, I devote everything to CC to win the Climate Accords. An impressive feat, I might add, since I was starting from about 3000 CO2 emissions . With 9 votes in the bag, the next congress begins.

Despite pumping in 2700 favour for about 22 votes for myself, I am defeated by the inevitable AI bloc with 41 votes. Back to 8. Despair. With at least 30 turns to wait, I set about launching my exoplanet expedition. I have all but given up.

In any case my victory is assured, I keep on producing CC projects just in case to maximise my favour. I'm also building space lasers, because I'm not waiting 50 turns to win, as we're nearly at 400 turns and I'm getting bored.

Having banked almost 5000 favour (and of course, having won the ISS competition), the next session begins. I am 1 turn away from Alpha Centauri.

I flood the elections. I get the points. The AI vote against me, but they haven't spent the last 30 years sucking all the CO2 out the atmosphere. Because the WC convenes at the very beginning of each turn, I get the Diplomatic Victory by the skin on my teeth. My spaceship misses the exoplanet system and plunges another nine light years into deep space, lost forever. But I don't care.

It is turn 394. I could have won a Science or Culture victory years ago. I am not doing this again