SwedishChef
Philosopher Chef
So, first - If you have, say, 5 great people and select two of them at once (shift-click), you can start a 16 turn golden age (which is, of course, just two 8-turn golden ages back to back.) The interesting point is that the game doesn't charge you 5 great people (I had 5). It only takes two pairs. I was trying to specify which two of my great people to use for the golden age when I discovered this - and unintentionally started the 2 consecutive GAs instead. Then noticed it hadn't consumed all 5 great people!
It would if you first started one golden age and then another. By starting two at once, you saved a great person! However, the game does know you've had 2 golden ages and so the NEXT (third) one will cost you 4 great people, as you might expect. In theory, I suppose one could start a 24-turn GA with 6 great people...
(I know, in general I agree using great people for golden ages may not be the best use - but this was late in the game and I felt I needed to rush production during the building stage of the space race.)
I presume that's a bug, but it could be a feature, I guess - rewarding those who accumulated more great people and who want to commit NOW to a 16-turn GA.
Almost certainly a bug: (Is there any central collection point for these?)
I failed to found Taoism when discovering Philosophy with the Oracle. I reloaded and used the Oracle to discover a different tech and later discovered Philosophy "manually" and DID found Taoism.
A few notes about my recent games, then more on bugs:
I first played a small game on noble with continenets and then a standard sized game on prince with "terra" landmasses. I won the first one diplo for "Winston Churchill" at around 11,800 points, then reloaded pre-diplo-win and finished it space race, made my people happy, etc. trying for a higher score and scored several hundred points less!
The prince game was interesting in that we were all on one continent with another entirely unoccupied continent to the east. (No, I didn't select the option for that, it just happened.) There were huge barbarian cities there. I managed to get a foothold first and with the addition of my forbidden palace this expansion really turned the game around for me. Egypt must have had some really great luck with goodie huts or something because they came flying out of the gate and never looked back. Took me all game to catch them - They were half done with their space ship when I launched.
The standard sized game was won by space-race and yielded about 11,500 points. I'm yet to go beyond "Winston Churchill."
The leaders have VERY strong personalities. Hatshepsut (sp?) would RARELY trade technologies, even when she liked me - whether she was leading or trailing the tech race. Tokugawa would NEVER agree to open borders with me - and converted to Taoism even when Confuscianism was much more common (he did eventually "see the light.")
For someone familiar with the past games, Settler is EASY. Not "easy," or "Easy," but "EASY." That's probably good for new players. I decided to play a one-city challenge on Settler because I'd never tried one before. Holy cow. Other civs finally managed to build 2 wonders I didn't care much about late in the game, but otherwise I built every available wonder, founded every religion, etc. I didn't really feel like I was doing anything diabolically strategic, either. Won the game in 1775 by diplomacy.
This led to a few other notes:
Though the Globe Theater National Wonder is adjusted in the one-city challenge to allow you to construct it with only a theater in that city (instead of the normal requirement of 5 or so), you cannot build ANY of the religious academies (Buddhist Stupa, Christian Cathedral, etc.) in the one city challenge for the 50% culture bonus! It complains you don't have 3 temples - and of course you don't! (Note that I'm not referring to the special Holy City buildings you can build with a great prophet - those are fine.)
This is almost certainly a bug because everything else seems adjusted for the one city challenge - you can even build more than 2 national wonders in your one city! Which I wish I'd known before I agonized for 10 turns over which to build for my second...
Other "bugs"
I had a broken cottage that NEVER turned into a hamlet - stayed at "1 turn until..." forever, until I built a workshop or something over it, once I noticed the problem.
If you have more than 6 Great People join a city as specialists you can't see some of them! You can still see their effect by, say, mousing over science output in the upper left corner, but there's no sign of them on the lower right.
I was able to run the game with my Radeon 9800, but I did the "unpacking" anyway and it seemed to reduce the frequency of video and sound issues.
Not a bug:
It annoys me that discovering the Scientific Method drops science. For my one-city game it dropped it from 628 to 477! Due to eliminating both
monasteries and the other thing that boosts commerce or science (slipping my mind...). Sure, you usually don't have 7 monasteries in one city contributing +70% science, but you well might have 1 monastery in each of 7 cities, each contributing +10%! That's a big cut.
Sure, I know the game is about playability and not realism, but come on. I'm supposed to AVOID discovering the scientific method for as long as reasonably possible (which I did - it was the only remaining advance open) in order to maintain my science output?
Finally, there may be a bug in negotiations, but to be honse I can't seem to nail this down. During negotiations for PEACE (not generaly trading) - When I propose something and ask if they'll accept it they say no. But if I THEN ask what will make it work, the "error" comes up and says, "only one player may offer things during peace negotiations!" and I click OK and then my enemy is saying, "How about this?" with my deal unchanged. So I accept and get what I wanted. This happened twice - both times I was demanding a technology for peace. (I didn't feel my demand was too extreme, but after I discovered it, I stopped using it. If this is a bug, it could be severely abused.)
Hope this is helpful to somebody - right now these forums seem to have so many articles, I'm sure no one can read them all...
It would if you first started one golden age and then another. By starting two at once, you saved a great person! However, the game does know you've had 2 golden ages and so the NEXT (third) one will cost you 4 great people, as you might expect. In theory, I suppose one could start a 24-turn GA with 6 great people...
(I know, in general I agree using great people for golden ages may not be the best use - but this was late in the game and I felt I needed to rush production during the building stage of the space race.)
I presume that's a bug, but it could be a feature, I guess - rewarding those who accumulated more great people and who want to commit NOW to a 16-turn GA.
Almost certainly a bug: (Is there any central collection point for these?)
I failed to found Taoism when discovering Philosophy with the Oracle. I reloaded and used the Oracle to discover a different tech and later discovered Philosophy "manually" and DID found Taoism.
A few notes about my recent games, then more on bugs:
I first played a small game on noble with continenets and then a standard sized game on prince with "terra" landmasses. I won the first one diplo for "Winston Churchill" at around 11,800 points, then reloaded pre-diplo-win and finished it space race, made my people happy, etc. trying for a higher score and scored several hundred points less!
The prince game was interesting in that we were all on one continent with another entirely unoccupied continent to the east. (No, I didn't select the option for that, it just happened.) There were huge barbarian cities there. I managed to get a foothold first and with the addition of my forbidden palace this expansion really turned the game around for me. Egypt must have had some really great luck with goodie huts or something because they came flying out of the gate and never looked back. Took me all game to catch them - They were half done with their space ship when I launched.
The standard sized game was won by space-race and yielded about 11,500 points. I'm yet to go beyond "Winston Churchill."
The leaders have VERY strong personalities. Hatshepsut (sp?) would RARELY trade technologies, even when she liked me - whether she was leading or trailing the tech race. Tokugawa would NEVER agree to open borders with me - and converted to Taoism even when Confuscianism was much more common (he did eventually "see the light.")
For someone familiar with the past games, Settler is EASY. Not "easy," or "Easy," but "EASY." That's probably good for new players. I decided to play a one-city challenge on Settler because I'd never tried one before. Holy cow. Other civs finally managed to build 2 wonders I didn't care much about late in the game, but otherwise I built every available wonder, founded every religion, etc. I didn't really feel like I was doing anything diabolically strategic, either. Won the game in 1775 by diplomacy.
This led to a few other notes:
Though the Globe Theater National Wonder is adjusted in the one-city challenge to allow you to construct it with only a theater in that city (instead of the normal requirement of 5 or so), you cannot build ANY of the religious academies (Buddhist Stupa, Christian Cathedral, etc.) in the one city challenge for the 50% culture bonus! It complains you don't have 3 temples - and of course you don't! (Note that I'm not referring to the special Holy City buildings you can build with a great prophet - those are fine.)
This is almost certainly a bug because everything else seems adjusted for the one city challenge - you can even build more than 2 national wonders in your one city! Which I wish I'd known before I agonized for 10 turns over which to build for my second...
Other "bugs"
I had a broken cottage that NEVER turned into a hamlet - stayed at "1 turn until..." forever, until I built a workshop or something over it, once I noticed the problem.
If you have more than 6 Great People join a city as specialists you can't see some of them! You can still see their effect by, say, mousing over science output in the upper left corner, but there's no sign of them on the lower right.
I was able to run the game with my Radeon 9800, but I did the "unpacking" anyway and it seemed to reduce the frequency of video and sound issues.
Not a bug:
It annoys me that discovering the Scientific Method drops science. For my one-city game it dropped it from 628 to 477! Due to eliminating both
monasteries and the other thing that boosts commerce or science (slipping my mind...). Sure, you usually don't have 7 monasteries in one city contributing +70% science, but you well might have 1 monastery in each of 7 cities, each contributing +10%! That's a big cut.
Sure, I know the game is about playability and not realism, but come on. I'm supposed to AVOID discovering the scientific method for as long as reasonably possible (which I did - it was the only remaining advance open) in order to maintain my science output?
Finally, there may be a bug in negotiations, but to be honse I can't seem to nail this down. During negotiations for PEACE (not generaly trading) - When I propose something and ask if they'll accept it they say no. But if I THEN ask what will make it work, the "error" comes up and says, "only one player may offer things during peace negotiations!" and I click OK and then my enemy is saying, "How about this?" with my deal unchanged. So I accept and get what I wanted. This happened twice - both times I was demanding a technology for peace. (I didn't feel my demand was too extreme, but after I discovered it, I stopped using it. If this is a bug, it could be severely abused.)
Hope this is helpful to somebody - right now these forums seem to have so many articles, I'm sure no one can read them all...
