Hey guys,
This is a wall of text; consider yourself warned.
I've recently started playing civ 5 with all the DLCs and I think I'm going to like it. I do so far at least. In the past, I tried civ 3 and 4 but somehow they never caught my attention long enough and I always returned to civ 2 which is my favorite. For all intents and purposes, I have no knowledge of game mechanics typical for 3 and 4.
I realize that 15 years that separate civ 2 and 5 is a lot but I intend to learn the new game soon enough.
There's a couple of issues however, most of them stem out of how I played civ 2.
I liked stuff like ship chains, caravan rehoming, super city science, trade bonuses, tech gifting+map trade for early conquest etc., things that weren't so obvious to new players but ultimately proved to be essential to anybody willing to achieve great results. I have no intention of competing against other players or jumping to the top difficulty levels just yet, I'm mostly interested in just playing the game.
I have always preferred the technological superiority approach and this is where my questions start. I'm playing either epic or marathon games as I like the prolonged games; nothing kills the fun for me like speedruns, at least for strategy games.
1) Does civ 5 have some kind of a list that has all the neat tricks and more or less abusive methods of playing? Civ 2 had a lot of this stuff so I have to wonder. There was the unsinkable trireme trick, there was ship chain trick that allowed you to deliver vans to distant lands in a single turn, wonder bread trick, incremental partial rush buy, emissary ploy and so on and so on. I hope there are some civ 2 players playing civ 5 here too so those terms will sound familiar
I mean there was a lot of useful or even fundamental knowledge that civiliopedia did not mention but it was common knowledge among players and a must for competitive gameplay on the highest difficulty level. Is anything like this true for civ 5?
2) I'm pretty much only interested in scientific victory (or maybe conquest, whichever feels right at the time) but even on chieftain/warlord difficulty level, I seem to enter modern era around year ~1900, with the last techs discovered 50-60 years later. I'd like to get there sooner, like 1500, to instill technological terror in underdeveloped civilizations but when I finally have the modern tanks and stealth bombers, it's 1960 and it doesn't feel like I've had that much of a progress compared to the real world.
Does civ 5 have some gameplay mechanisms that can potentially grant huge boosts to science and elevate the player's civ to the next era long before the real world equivalent? If yes, is there some way to maintain such a huge tech lead over a long period of time?
3) There are so many wonders and semi-wonders that I don't really know what to build as I have no conception of long term benefits of each of them or their relative uselessness versus my victory plan. I mean, civ 2 had Great Library that granted its owner every tech that two other civilizations have discovered.
Apparently great wonder from a beginner's POV turned out to be completely useless or even harmful to very focused and specialized civilizations that cut through tech tree rapidly to reach crucial stuff like theory of gravity and explosives. In the end virtually no advanced player ever built it because of mounting costs of research that grew with each tech acquired and the unpredictability of Great Library gifts.
I'm pretty sure there are some wonders in civ 5 that seem very useful and beneficial but in the long run may be a waste of time and production. Some wonders might work in synergy with others, like Copernicus' Observatory did with Colossus and with Isaac Newton's College, to create a super science city which was responsible for 90% of scientific output of a civ. Anything similar possible in civ 5?
4) Civ 5 seems to favor small civilizations. My first game involved 10 cities initially and 5 more later from a conquered civilization and even on the lower difficulty level I faced massive problems with (un)happiness until ~industrial era.
Is there some established way of playing as a large empire that benefits from great population, many cities and large geographical area full of useful resources?
Right now I'm playing a game with only 6 cities though they overlap each other to a minimum degree, so that with population of 10 and respective border growth, they still have unclaimed spaces between them, ready to be inhabited later. I think that if those cities have the right conditions (as in worked tiles with mines, trade improvements and farms), they will grow to be vast metropolises eventually but civ 2 allowed that much earlier and with 20-25 cities even on higher difficulty. I don't feel like waiting till industrial or modern eras to start churning out tanks and infantry to invade neighbors that still have pikemen and archers, I want to have the production output from big cities earlier so I can benefit from the whole spectrum of units this game offers.
5) Trade was a crucial element of civ2, especially on emperor/deity. The bulk of wealth and scientific progress was achieved through trade between super science city and foreign civs and gifting of technologies that further increased pay-offs from establishing routes with distant civilizations.
It feels like there's a much smaller impact that it has on your civilization in Civ 5. Is this right or maybe I'm missing something? I built some caravans but they have a very limited range that only extends to a poorly developed inland civilization of Mongols. I made some trade agreements to ensure celebration in some of my cities but other civs are reluctant to establish an exchange even when I'm offering what seems to be a generous deal. Once other civs expanded and grew more populous, more luxury and strategic resources were available for trade but that came much later in the game.
6) Is there a way to rebuild your reputation after prolonged conquests? In my first game, I conquered two city states and Indian civilization in rapid succession around the time of first gunpowder units and once denunciations from all the other civs started, even from those unaffected in the least by mentioned wars, they continued well into modern era. I had situation where 20 modern tanks units awaited at the border of a civilization that has barely made it to renaissance era and when I demanded something from them, they always refused and I had to invade them and take it by force.
Is there no such thing in this game as scare factor? No ultimatums and threats of violence backed by superior military both in technology and numbers? Strange, twenty years after the first civilization came out. Once I take one third of their cities in a single turn, they usually offer some deal in exchange for peace but seriously, were were they when I issued my demands?
I guess this pretty much covers my most immediate doubts. I should probably end this post here before it turns into full blown rant about lousy AI that civilization game designers can't seem to get right even after two decades of developing the title.
This is a wall of text; consider yourself warned.
I've recently started playing civ 5 with all the DLCs and I think I'm going to like it. I do so far at least. In the past, I tried civ 3 and 4 but somehow they never caught my attention long enough and I always returned to civ 2 which is my favorite. For all intents and purposes, I have no knowledge of game mechanics typical for 3 and 4.
I realize that 15 years that separate civ 2 and 5 is a lot but I intend to learn the new game soon enough.
There's a couple of issues however, most of them stem out of how I played civ 2.
I liked stuff like ship chains, caravan rehoming, super city science, trade bonuses, tech gifting+map trade for early conquest etc., things that weren't so obvious to new players but ultimately proved to be essential to anybody willing to achieve great results. I have no intention of competing against other players or jumping to the top difficulty levels just yet, I'm mostly interested in just playing the game.
I have always preferred the technological superiority approach and this is where my questions start. I'm playing either epic or marathon games as I like the prolonged games; nothing kills the fun for me like speedruns, at least for strategy games.
1) Does civ 5 have some kind of a list that has all the neat tricks and more or less abusive methods of playing? Civ 2 had a lot of this stuff so I have to wonder. There was the unsinkable trireme trick, there was ship chain trick that allowed you to deliver vans to distant lands in a single turn, wonder bread trick, incremental partial rush buy, emissary ploy and so on and so on. I hope there are some civ 2 players playing civ 5 here too so those terms will sound familiar
I mean there was a lot of useful or even fundamental knowledge that civiliopedia did not mention but it was common knowledge among players and a must for competitive gameplay on the highest difficulty level. Is anything like this true for civ 5?
2) I'm pretty much only interested in scientific victory (or maybe conquest, whichever feels right at the time) but even on chieftain/warlord difficulty level, I seem to enter modern era around year ~1900, with the last techs discovered 50-60 years later. I'd like to get there sooner, like 1500, to instill technological terror in underdeveloped civilizations but when I finally have the modern tanks and stealth bombers, it's 1960 and it doesn't feel like I've had that much of a progress compared to the real world.
Does civ 5 have some gameplay mechanisms that can potentially grant huge boosts to science and elevate the player's civ to the next era long before the real world equivalent? If yes, is there some way to maintain such a huge tech lead over a long period of time?
3) There are so many wonders and semi-wonders that I don't really know what to build as I have no conception of long term benefits of each of them or their relative uselessness versus my victory plan. I mean, civ 2 had Great Library that granted its owner every tech that two other civilizations have discovered.
Apparently great wonder from a beginner's POV turned out to be completely useless or even harmful to very focused and specialized civilizations that cut through tech tree rapidly to reach crucial stuff like theory of gravity and explosives. In the end virtually no advanced player ever built it because of mounting costs of research that grew with each tech acquired and the unpredictability of Great Library gifts.
I'm pretty sure there are some wonders in civ 5 that seem very useful and beneficial but in the long run may be a waste of time and production. Some wonders might work in synergy with others, like Copernicus' Observatory did with Colossus and with Isaac Newton's College, to create a super science city which was responsible for 90% of scientific output of a civ. Anything similar possible in civ 5?
4) Civ 5 seems to favor small civilizations. My first game involved 10 cities initially and 5 more later from a conquered civilization and even on the lower difficulty level I faced massive problems with (un)happiness until ~industrial era.
Is there some established way of playing as a large empire that benefits from great population, many cities and large geographical area full of useful resources?
Right now I'm playing a game with only 6 cities though they overlap each other to a minimum degree, so that with population of 10 and respective border growth, they still have unclaimed spaces between them, ready to be inhabited later. I think that if those cities have the right conditions (as in worked tiles with mines, trade improvements and farms), they will grow to be vast metropolises eventually but civ 2 allowed that much earlier and with 20-25 cities even on higher difficulty. I don't feel like waiting till industrial or modern eras to start churning out tanks and infantry to invade neighbors that still have pikemen and archers, I want to have the production output from big cities earlier so I can benefit from the whole spectrum of units this game offers.
5) Trade was a crucial element of civ2, especially on emperor/deity. The bulk of wealth and scientific progress was achieved through trade between super science city and foreign civs and gifting of technologies that further increased pay-offs from establishing routes with distant civilizations.
It feels like there's a much smaller impact that it has on your civilization in Civ 5. Is this right or maybe I'm missing something? I built some caravans but they have a very limited range that only extends to a poorly developed inland civilization of Mongols. I made some trade agreements to ensure celebration in some of my cities but other civs are reluctant to establish an exchange even when I'm offering what seems to be a generous deal. Once other civs expanded and grew more populous, more luxury and strategic resources were available for trade but that came much later in the game.
6) Is there a way to rebuild your reputation after prolonged conquests? In my first game, I conquered two city states and Indian civilization in rapid succession around the time of first gunpowder units and once denunciations from all the other civs started, even from those unaffected in the least by mentioned wars, they continued well into modern era. I had situation where 20 modern tanks units awaited at the border of a civilization that has barely made it to renaissance era and when I demanded something from them, they always refused and I had to invade them and take it by force.
Is there no such thing in this game as scare factor? No ultimatums and threats of violence backed by superior military both in technology and numbers? Strange, twenty years after the first civilization came out. Once I take one third of their cities in a single turn, they usually offer some deal in exchange for peace but seriously, were were they when I issued my demands?
I guess this pretty much covers my most immediate doubts. I should probably end this post here before it turns into full blown rant about lousy AI that civilization game designers can't seem to get right even after two decades of developing the title.
