My review of the livecast

[Mannu]

Does a scout get better results from ruins? I know that all results are positive now, but I wondered if perhaps a scout would get the best results.

 

[kaltorak]

Speaking of which, I'm still concerned about the icons in the game. In the city screen,
the hammer yield and gold yield icons for the tiles look almost identical.

I agree. The city screen resources are just like colored dots. At least it looks like that on the videos, maybe playing it will be better

 

[Schuesseled]

No they don't perhaps its just your eyes?

 

[Schuesseled]

And it does not get stopped by crossing a river.

yes which is basically rough terrain so wahts your point...

 

[Louis XXIV]

You can't zig zag as easily to get around river obstructions as you can with hills.

 

[kaltorak]

You can't zig zag as easily to get around river obstructions as you can with hills.

Good point, hadn't thought about it

 

[generalwar]

You don't have one clear frontier to another state anymore. I'm curious how this will impact the gameplay...

Now, it's really interesting. With pact of secrecy and city states that are really corrupted you will never know who is a real danger. You go to war and suddenly, AI with 2 city states backstabbed you and captured half of your country and lost even attack units and everything go to hell. In history, you never knew who is going to attack you and use your weaknesses against you. But I'm worried that civ 5 is going to be very tough. A lot of not important wars and few world wars. Will see next Friday.

 

[Polobo]

yes which is basically rough terrain so wahts your point...

Your units actually land ON terrain but they only CROSS rivers.

From an effect standpoint they are similar but they are not the same.

Guessing I am just being particular/OCD about it, thats all.

Regardless, the additional movement afforded by a scout makes it a good recon unit for covering territory without getting killed and also a good support/finisher unit for taking out barbs. Once the warrior wounds them a scout should have good odds to finish the job and then go scout out more barbs while the warrior heals.

While Greg sent the warrior and scout different directions it would have made sense to keep them somewhat close together and scout around the capital so that, with honor, they'd be able to quickly join together and take out barb camps. Then, with the gold from the camp and the occasional brute it would be fairly easy to put together another hunter-killer group.

 

[kaltorak]

Now, it's really interesting. With pact of secrecy and city states that are really corrupted you will never know who is a real danger. You go to war and suddenly, AI with 2 city states backstabbed you and captured half of your country and lost even attack units and everything go to hell. In history, you never knew who is going to attack you and use your weaknesses against you. But I'm worried that civ 5 is going to be very tough. A lot of not important wars and few world wars. Will see next Friday.

It's not about difficulty, but about randomness. And too much randomness can make the game less fun.

If we start having less controll of diplomacy (modifiers not visible) and the AI starts playing to win, that means it can attack you anytime, unlike civ4 where you could bring it to friendly, at the end everything will be just too random to be fun. Difficulty is not a problem, since you can always go a level up or down, but just not fun.

You can't put the AI loyalty at the same level as our own (so low that is, since we don't care to betray for winning). Because then there will be no diplomacy at all.

 

[alpaca]

It's not about difficulty, but about randomness. And too much randomness can make the game less fun.

If we start having less controll of diplomacy (modifiers not visible) and the AI starts playing to win, that means it can attack you anytime, unlike civ4 where you could bring it to friendly, at the end everything will be just too random to be fun. Difficulty is not a problem, since you can always go a level up or down, but just not fun.

You can't put the AI loyalty at the same level as our own (so low that is, since we don't care to betray for winning). Because then there will be no diplomacy at all.

I marvel at your definition of "fun". Being able to predict exactly what your opponents are going to do is fun for you? For me, avoiding frustration doesn't equal fun.

If you don't know whether the AI won't "randomly" attack you because you have a weaker army or just a weakly defended city somewhere, it means you'll have to be prepared for it or live with the risk. That actually sounds like fun to me: You have to make sure not to exposed your cities or to make not attacking you more profitable for the character in question than attacking you, by building defences or giving them agreements like resource delivery or so.

What would be unfun is when your allies are simply going to backstab you unless you're the last thing standing in their way of victory.

For an idea that's totally out there: you could even go as far as to implement a meta-game AI. When playing the board game Diplomacy a fair number of times with friends, we were initially very backstabbing and watched each other like cats. But as it turns out, if you actually stick to your word most of the time, your allies are more likely to trust you and stick to theirs. Which means that you slowly go from a very paranoid environment to one that's a lot more fun. If one would allow the AI leaders to carry over their experiences with you into the next games you play against them, much as you do with your experiences, this would lead to far more ethically conscious players.

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

I kept asking this question over and over, and got no response from 2kElizabeth:

Why didn't France embark and invade Greg's southern shores? Why try to smash your head through the choke point when Optics could have made an invasion so much easier?

Is the AI not capable of making those decisions? I know I saw it embark onto a water tile at the end, but it did it in a very dumb way.

 

[Schuesseled]

You can't zig zag as easily to get around river obstructions as you can with hills.

okay, okay, thats is a particuarly good point.

 

[VikingMaekel]

As posted in other threads: Nappy tried, Greg's 2 Archers and Trebuchet shot them and then they were taken apart by Greg's Samurai once they landed.

 

[alpaca]

I kept asking this question over and over, and got no response from 2kElizabeth:

Why didn't France embark and invade Greg's southern shores? Why try to smash your head through the choke point when Optics could have made an invasion so much easier?

Is the AI not capable of making those decisions? I know I saw it embark onto a water tile at the end, but it did it in a very dumb way.

2k Greg wrote in a thread that they tried, he shot them with his ranged weapons and finished them off with Samurai. From the savegame, Greg held Arabia for most of the time so where do you think the AI should have disembarked? Go on a long and risky journey via the Indian ocean? Or try invading North Africa? The second is more likely to have succeeded but still a gamble without information about Greg's army placement. In Nappy's case, I would also have assumed to be able to beat this backwards idiot with my new-fangled guns.

The Japanese special ability seems incredibly powerful. No easy finishing off almost dead units against them.

 

[mjs0]

I kept asking this question over and over, and got no response from 2kElizabeth:

Why didn't France embark and invade Greg's southern shores? Why try to smash your head through the choke point when Optics could have made an invasion so much easier?

Is the AI not capable of making those decisions? I know I saw it embark onto a water tile at the end, but it did it in a very dumb way.

Greg explained in another post that the AI had tried that earlier in the war:

They were crossing the sea a lot earlier in the war. However, I was able to ranged attack them when they embarked, which would force them to land wounded, and then my samurai could easily finish them off in open ground.

I guess Napolean learnt from this and didn't try again, a very promising sign I must say.

 

[alpaca]

No they don't perhaps its just your eyes?

Just saw this. I don't think so, they are both small yellow circles, right? One with a hammer in the middle and one without, but still indistinguishable unless you look closely. For example until I had a closer look, I wasn't sure if the forest near Berlin yielded 3 hammers or 3 commerce. Bad resolution no doubt worsened things, but the general problem is still that they are two small yellow blips.

In contrast, food is green and science is blue, which is fairly easy to tell apart on a glance.

 

[TheMystic]

I kept asking this question over and over, and got no response from 2kElizabeth:

Why didn't France embark and invade Greg's southern shores? Why try to smash your head through the choke point when Optics could have made an invasion so much easier?

Is the AI not capable of making those decisions? I know I saw it embark onto a water tile at the end, but it did it in a very dumb way.

I know some others have commented already but I also want to point out that water transport is EXTREMELY dangerous if you don't have escorts. With the exception of one Civ, water units have no ability to defend themselves while in transport form. If a ship rolls up they're toast, and if artillery is waiting near the landing point then expect to land with damaged units.

 

[Schuesseled]

Just saw this. I don't think so, they are both small yellow circles, right? One with a hammer in the middle and one without, but still indistinguishable unless you look closely. For example until I had a closer look, I wasn't sure if the forest near Berlin yielded 3 hammers or 3 commerce. Bad resolution no doubt worsened things, but the general problem is still that they are two small yellow blips.

In contrast, food is green and science is blue, which is fairly easy to tell apart on a glance.

One is orange, and one is yellow. They could have pehaps picked colours which are easier to distinguish between, but they still don't look alike.

 

[generalwar]

You can't put the AI loyalty at the same level as our own (so low that is, since we don't care to betray for winning). Because then there will be no diplomacy at all.

Well, civ should be a bigger challenge as new civ expansions are coming out. When you think about diplomatic modifiers, they were too unreal because your neighbours will always use your weakness, especially before UN was built( After UN you accuse state for terrorism and occupy it). Civ is the ardest strategy game and the most realistic strategy game because you have a lot of factors to think about. Not like most of other games that almost don't have anything than warring and some small diplomacy options and limitated to one history era like to mediaval times or modern. In civ, you go from dawn of men until the space age. You have to conquer your enemies and think about what are you going to say to your neighbour and how are you going to manage diplomacy, esspecially now, when city-states came in game. So, moving diplomacy modifiers was a good decision to make civ series more real and you would have no use of then, because AI's are now smart, aren't they?

 

[Shurdus]

One thing that really bugged me about the game was that they said the game was played on a high end machin, yet the graphics seemed so bad. The hills looked so unnatural, as if it was a rippled bedsheet or something. Also the colors looked horrible. I did not like the look one bit.