How has G&K changed the ability to build units or infrastructure and spam cities?

[learner gamer]

To anyone lucky enough to be playing G&K: out of curiosity, how much has G&K’s pace of production changed from vanilla? Are you finding you can now build materially more units and infrastructure than in Civ 5? As a corollary, how many cities are G&K gamers running, by say turn 100 or turn 200?

I ask because I’m watching a G&K let’s play on youtube from Quill18 and have noticed that he only has 3 cities as at turn 115. However, this is due in part to his decisions to (i) build 2 wonders and (ii) grow his capital vertically (at the expense of working mines), so I’d love to gain some insight on what size empires are possible in G&K from gamers with a different gaming style.

Thanks for any and all feedback.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Much later trading posts make it much harder to build strong economy, so less buying units. Other than that, I doubt there are any problems.

 

[Randall_Flagg]

Your milage may differ, but the game plays a lot slower to me. Tech pace seems waaaay slower. Cannot do my archer buys, as was pointed out gold is more scarce. So scarce I am thinking songai might be a power to consider. The AI seems to have no issue with troops, but I think that is because they ignore infrastructure. I however, am having a few issues keeping up.

 

[Putmalk]

I'd say units and buildings are much cheaper production wise, but acquiring gold is more difficult (good thing it doesn't have to be spent on city-states...).

Spamming cities is a viable strategy if land is available and you have excess happiness (which is very easy to obtain). You'll probably have to keep a healthy balance of units and buildings in order to expand wide.

 

[thadian]

no im building less, because of other stated reasons. Also, this has caused me to build less troops and hoard my gold instead of buying a worker/settler.

Now i go straight to beeline writing, then beeline iron working. I only build libraries and keep cities small so i can have more cities out there.

I also play tall - and usually run 3 cities. See, there reaches a point where settling a new city is less good than bad. It starts out with nothing, you have to build it from scratch, and every time i think about a new city i think about a wonder instead.

Im still getting a LOT of wonder rush games on diety where i build a lot of wonders and just see how long i can hang, i usually make it to 200 with no serious army, 3 cities and more wonders than monty has troops to take them with.

 

[Lukin]

Your milage may differ, but the game plays a lot slower to me. Tech pace seems waaaay slower. Cannot do my archer buys, as was pointed out gold is more scarce. So scarce I am thinking songai might be a power to consider. The AI seems to have no issue with troops, but I think that is because they ignore infrastructure. I however, am having a few issues keeping up.

I thought it was my imagination that a Quick G&K game feels like a Normal vanilla game. I imagine a Normal G&K game would feel like an epic vanilla game.

 

[Andulias]

Gotta love Quill18, I am waiting for the next LP as well.

I don't think G+K has changed production from vanilla at all, it was patches that significantly altered that (read - sped it up). Rather, G+K has slowed down research and made it harder to bulb and slingshot important techs. As for cities -4 seems legit at the point where Quill18. Civ V does put more emphasis on growing your cities than spamming them early on, and your economy will be slightly harder to maintain. On the other hand I completely understand why they moved TPs so far down the tree. With CSs not emphasizing gold as much as before having TPs right off the bat would have obliterated the game balance.

 

[Zhahz]

Your milage may differ, but the game plays a lot slower to me. Tech pace seems waaaay slower. Cannot do my archer buys, as was pointed out gold is more scarce. So scarce I am thinking songai might be a power to consider. The AI seems to have no issue with troops, but I think that is because they ignore infrastructure. I however, am having a few issues keeping up.

The initial pace is different, for sure.

Tech costs seem to ramp up faster so it slows tech pace after a fast initial burst.

Stuff costs less to build but there's a wider variety of stuff you want to build initially (or at least that I want to build )

Battles with low numbers of units involved take a lot longer (ex 1 unit clearing a barb camp).

Changes to units, buildings, tech tree, SPs, etc seem to make for a smoother and less spikey early game. It feels like it's forever until you can build trading posts.

I read somewhere recently that they changed stuff up early to make the early game move faster and I'm not sure what that means. It feels slower to me but at the same time it feels more involved so the slower pace isn't so much of a drag. I think the biggest difference is you don't feel like you're clicking next turn forever waiting for anything interesting to happen for 10+ turns.

 

[kgoodrid]

What level are you guys playing at? I'm on Prince / Standard Speed right now, and the top 3 Civs (myself as Byz, Japan, and Russia) all are getting into the Industrial era around the 15-1600s. Some of the weaker Civs are just now hitting the Renaissance.

Next game I plan to go to King / Epic with a larger map, if my current game with a normal size map doesn't slow down too much during the end game. Hopefully that will slow things down a little.

 

[Drawmeus]

It's slower to progress with more to do, basically. I've found it to be a much more active game (more little things to manage, more buildings and units I want) but slower through the eras.

Not sure if this is good, bad, or just an artifact of poor strategy due to still being in my first game with the expansion.

 

[Cymsdale]

It's slower to progress with more to do, basically. I've found it to be a much more active game (more little things to manage, more buildings and units I want) but slower through the eras.

Not sure if this is good, bad, or just an artifact of poor strategy due to still being in my first game with the expansion.

I get the same impression as well. I like how I feel like I'm "playing" every era now instead of simply blowing past them.