New Patch First Impressions

[SupremacyKing2]

It's still pretty boring once you get past early expansion though.

All of the civ versions suffer from this to some degree or another.

 

[EnderCN]

I'm enjoying the patch so far as well, but the AI still seems to be pretty bad. I'm playing on Soyuz difficulty and winning --- just to show you how n00bish I am, I have never won a Civ game on the second-hardest ranking before (Emperor or Deity), and yet I am doing so quite easily in this game. The AI just sent about 8 ships to attack my coastal city without a single land unit to actually take it over after it easily reduced my city to 0.

Yeah it is pretty painfully bad. Last game I had 1 soldier and got attacked early by 3 rovers, 3 rangers and 2 marines and I was able to use my city and a couple quick bought units to fight him off. It sent some units too close to a 2nd city that got free shots as well. Then later on I fought off a 2nd attack where it totally failed to use artillery properly and eventually he asked for peace and gave me his only city other than his capital. If that had been a real person I'd have easily lost the game.

After a bit of time I got out ahead of everyone in tech and it was pretty obvious I was going to win so I just quit because after about turn 200 the game is just dull. That was also on Soyuz.

 

[CraigMak]

Yeah it is pretty painfully bad. Last game I had 1 soldier and got attacked early by 3 rovers, 3 rangers and 2 marines and I was able to use my city and a couple quick bought units to fight him off. It sent some units too close to a 2nd city that got free shots as well. Then later on I fought off a 2nd attack where it totally failed to use artillery properly and eventually he asked for peace and gave me his only city other than his capital. If that had been a real person I'd have easily lost the game.

After a bit of time I got out ahead of everyone in tech and it was pretty obvious I was going to win so I just quit because after about turn 200 the game is just dull. That was also on Soyuz.

Yes, the AI is currently so bad, even on Apollo that multiplayer is the only way to go.

 

[PyreStarite]

Back in civ5 I was about to win the space victory as Korea and Sweden sent a fleet (Quote "fleet") to attack my capitol and as it was said above. No land units to actually take the city. Then shortly after Sweden declared war on me my neighbor Spain (I never liked her) decided it was an ample opportunity to declare war on me as well, but did not actually really attack me. When I wasn't building spaceship parts, I was slowly contributing units to the border and she didn't dare cross. The only thing I remember is her greatwar bomber trying to attack my gunship and got intercepted by my antiair and that was that. I won. CYA SUCKERS I'M GOIN PLACES! Then I bought BE

 

[PhilBowles]

Back in civ5 I was about to win the space victory as Korea and Sweden sent a fleet (Quote "fleet") to attack my capitol and as it was said above. No land units to actually take the city. Then shortly after Sweden declared war on me my neighbor Spain (I never liked her) decided it was an ample opportunity to declare war on me as well, but did not actually really attack me. When I wasn't building spaceship parts, I was slowly contributing units to the border and she didn't dare cross. The only thing I remember is her greatwar bomber trying to attack my gunship and got intercepted by my antiair and that was that. I won. CYA SUCKERS I'M GOIN PLACES! Then I bought BE

I still remember a Civ V game in either very late vanilla or early Gods & Kings where I had an extremely close run - as Persia I had a small empire on a single island, and since the AI had displayed its usual inability to even try to across overseas I hadn't bothered with an army. As I got closer to space victory, the Ottomans declared war. Fair enough ... except that they unexpectedly showed up with a large fleet that I barely fought off. They did take one city, and to my surprise (I'd never previously known the AI to use air power effectively) rebased a bomber there. Even more surprisingly, they coordinated their attacks with the weak Songhai to my south, who besieged one of my weaker cities.

Still, I was almost at the spaceship and Persepolis was safe ... until a second Ottoman fleet turned up right outside it. The spaceship went up only a turn before I'd have lost the city.

I haven't seen this sort of active attempt to deny victory in Civ V in its more recent versions (I'm of the opinion that the ideology and other modifiers in BNW did a lot to confuse or otherwise 'dumb down' AI routines in the later game), but it happened a few times relatively early in the game's life. Another I recall is a combined effort by most surviving civs to systematically attack and take out my city-states in a G&K game where I was close to diplomatic victory.

The AI is almost invariably not good enough to actually stop me this way (I only lose when it outraces me, not when it actively tries to stop me winning) - the Ottomans could probably have beaten me by putting their first surprise fleet in position to attack my capital, for example, although without the bomber support they'd have had a harder time - but when it does make the effort, it produces very memorable games.