Odd gaming: Investigation of Settlerless starts

[danaphanous]

You guys still havent' answered my original question: does this crash happen with ANY pantheon pick or just some? I took faith healers and got no crash. If there's one safe to take you could get around it that way. Might be worth testing. When I test the playstyle again I'll see if I can replicate the crash. I wrote the guide 2 years ago, shortly after BNW.

For new players trying this: I'll eventually make a video I think for this, but for now, keep in mind the beginning can be gimmicky but later the strategy is straightforward and solid if you can get the ball rolling. Whether or not you convert your first camp will matter a lot in how quickly you can dominate the map. If you don't you'll have to run off and waste 10 turns to heal and then find another camp. It wastes a ton of time. And if you play raging barbs as I did it's even more dangerous. Raging has several advantages: mainly the AI on marathon will have difficulty expanding and scouting. It means the barbs spawn more frequently and longer as a result and more ruins for you if you can get your conversions up quick. later it CAN mean more culture too if you open honor. The biggest random factor is whether or not you get lucky enough to score 2 culture ruins or not. With raging barbs and reduced civ numbers on pangaea it's "likely". If you manage it you will not get the chance to open honor till you capture and are razing your first city as you need a city to spend culture. But a razing city counts. If you have trouble pulling off: #1 the first barb conversion or #2 two culture ruin finds due to RNG I'm not gonna blame you for rerolling. Both make a huge impact on the speed and likelihood of victory.

I can discuss the early strategy in more detail later.

 

[fyar]

^^I'm on OS 10.10, and I've never had a problem with Civ V. Are you using the steam version or the Apple Store version? Which Civ V are you playing (vanilla, G&K, or BNW)?

OSX Yosemite 10.10.5 through Steam. But when you say you've never had a problem with Civ V, I'm not surprised... this ONLY happens in the very unusual circumstance when you have to choose a pantheon and you don't have any cities. Basically, if you are playing this guide. I'd hardly call it having a "problem" with Civ V when this is certainly not how pantheons were supposed to work.

You guys still havent' answered my original question: does this crash happen with ANY pantheon pick or just some? I took faith healers and got no crash. If there's one safe to take you could get around it that way. Might be worth testing. When I test the playstyle again I'll see if I can replicate the crash. I wrote the guide 2 years ago, shortly after BNW.

This is with any pantheon. Faith healers was the first one I tried, and I tried a number of other ones too. They all caused a crash. I'm assuming that the bug was accidentally introduced with one of the patches.

For new players trying this: I'll eventually make a video I think for this, but for now, keep in mind the beginning can be gimmicky but later the strategy is straightforward and solid if you can get the ball rolling. Whether or not you convert your first camp will matter a lot in how quickly you can dominate the map. If you don't you'll have to run off and waste 10 turns to heal and then find another camp. It wastes a ton of time. And if you play raging barbs as I did it's even more dangerous. Raging has several advantages: mainly the AI on marathon will have difficulty expanding and scouting. It means the barbs spawn more frequently and longer as a result and more ruins for you if you can get your conversions up quick. later it CAN mean more culture too if you open honor. The biggest random factor is whether or not you get lucky enough to score 2 culture ruins or not. With raging barbs and reduced civ numbers on pangaea it's "likely". If you manage it you will not get the chance to open honor till you capture and are razing your first city as you need a city to spend culture. But a razing city counts. If you have trouble pulling off: #1 the first barb conversion or #2 two culture ruin finds due to RNG I'm not gonna blame you for rerolling. Both make a huge impact on the speed and likelihood of victory.

A video would be pretty cool!

I would add that you certainly don't need to re-roll just because you don't get the two culture ruins. Playing your way (as opposed to mine where I DoW city-states and with one-city challenge) you can easily get enough culture to open honor by friending or even allying a cultural city-state. You can do this very easily by completing barb quests, and even by spending your immense gold reserve on city-state gifts.

Just curious though, if you're really going for the full barbarian "immersion" why not also DoW the city-states? I started a game your way but I started thinking it was too easy with all the city-states as your friends. Not just for the culture but as "heal centers" where my troops can heal more quickly since I didn't have any cities. But since the idea was full barbarian immersion, I started a new game where I DoWed them all. That can get annoying if you don't also have one-city challenge turned on, because some of them will be in your way, and if you capture them, then having to keep them will be a huge drain.

 

[danaphanous]

The main reason I never attempted a full barbarian play including DOWing CS on sight is because this was before I realized OCC solved the problems of CS and capitals not razing. Since I didn't know OCC solved the problem I mostly ignored the CS and focused on razing all AI cities and camping them with an army. Then I took all the capitals in one rush at the same time. That is how I won. Your discovery that you can win with OCC as long as you take the final 2 capitals simultaneously is enlightening though and would be a tad easier as I won't need to let the caps sit and split my armies as much. The main downside is if you time it incorrectly you automatically lose but it shouldn't be hard since you can just bombard the city down to 0 and leave it till you know you can capture both. And I bet you could conquer a bigger map with OCC as well.

How large of a map did you play out of curiousity?

 

[fyar]

The main reason I never attempted a full barbarian play including DOWing CS on sight is because this was before I realized OCC solved the problems of CS and capitals not razing. Since I didn't know OCC solved the problem I mostly ignored the CS and focused on razing all AI cities and camping them with an army. Then I took all the capitals in one rush at the same time. That is how I won. Your discovery that you can win with OCC as long as you take the final 2 capitals simultaneously is enlightening though and would be a tad easier as I won't need to let the caps sit and split my armies as much. The main downside is if you time it incorrectly you automatically lose but it shouldn't be hard since you can just bombard the city down to 0 and leave it till you know you can capture both. And I bet you could conquer a bigger map with OCC as well.

How large of a map did you play out of curiousity?

I played a standard-sized map but reduced to 5 civs, just as you had done. Your way can be fun in its own way also because you get to open honor, and I don't, even if I've accumulated enough culture from ruins. Knowing when/where encampments spawn is a huge boon, whereas I in my game just had to look around every now and then, but when you look and don't find anything, that actually hurts you because they only spawn in tiles that haven't been scouted for a while.

The game that I played your way was fun because of being able to open the Honor tree, but I didn't finish only because it became evident I wasn't going to win. (I had bad luck with enemy cities in choke points and poor unit composition, with only 1 archer and like dozens of brutes. So my next game I dialed it down from I think Emperor to Prince.)

Next time I might try with a full complement of civs (8 for standard, 10 for large). Large might be better because there's more empty space for barbs to spawn, but being able to raze capitals/city-states can help with that too.

 

[Volcanon]

^^I'm on OS 10.10, and I've never had a problem with Civ V. Are you using the steam version or the Apple Store version? Which Civ V are you playing (vanilla, G&K, or BNW)?

They removed support for old OSX. I use my laptop for work so its not as easy to update the game.

 

[dunkleosteus]

In a domination only game in which you don't settle a capital, is it possible for you or the AI to win?

 

[dunkleosteus]

Can you get culture before settling a city? Aztecs can get culture pretty easily.

I wonder what a venice start would be like? If could somehow get culture as venice, could you get a merchant of venice from liberty? And if so, could you buy a CS? And if you DO buy a city state, is it still puppeted? So many questions.

 

[fyar]

In a domination only game in which you don't settle a capital, is it possible for you or the AI to win?

Yes. The criterion is simply having control of all existing original capitals. If yours does not exist, then the criterion applies to all the others.

Suppose there are 8 civs. If you do not turn on one-city challenge, then it's a clear-cut case for you to win a domination victory. By the end, you'll control 7 capitals, and no other civs will control anyway.

If you do have one-city challenge, as I had done, then it's a little trickier, because you won't have any cities, even when you capture capitals. However, the check for domination victory occurs just *before* the city is razed. So if you take 7 of 8 capitals, then as you take the 7th, the game checks and realizes that you have one capital, and the last remaining AI has one capital. But immediately after performing the check, that 7th capital is razed. Now the situation is different: there is an AI with the a capital, whereas you do not have any capital. If you capture another city, the game will check again, and that other AI, who has the only capital, will win... UNLESS the city you captured was the final capital. So you MUST take the 7th and 8th capitals consecutively. I don't think it has to be the same turn, but I do think that you'll technically lose if you capture any other cities in between.

I only did this once, so maybe someone else can test it out.

 

[NomadMan284]

This sounded like a fascinating play style so I thought I'd give it a try. However I found that because I did not have a city there was no bar at the top indicating my gold, culture, etc. And even though I acquired gold through meeting CSs and finding ruins I had no gold. Also no culture. Am I missing something?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Volcanon]

What if you did this in conjunction with OCC? Better capture a good first city 'cuz your not getting another one.

 

[fyar]

This sounded like a fascinating play style so I thought I'd give it a try. However I found that because I did not have a city there was no bar at the top indicating my gold, culture, etc. And even though I acquired gold through meeting CSs and finding ruins I had no gold. Also no culture. Am I missing something?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

NomadMan, it's true that the bar on the top does not appear until you have a city. But you are still collecting gold, culture, and even faith, although you can't see them. Even if you can't see how much gold you have you should be able to give it to city-states for influence (unless you declare war on them as I did). If you play without one-city challenge turned on, you can select a social policy if you have enough culture when you capture a city (although, as danaphanous instructs, you should instantly raze any non-capitals if you want to follow his playstyle). You can open the policy menu by pressing F4, but even then you still can't select anything until you control a city.

If you have one-city challenge turned on, as I had, then you will never be able to select any social policies because you'll never have any cities.

Lastly, after trying that play style once, and not being able to see the bar at the top, I downloaded the EUI mod (which doesn't actually affect the gameplay, only the user interface). With the EUI, you can in fact see the bar at the top even when you don't have any cities. I like the EUI mod for many reasons unrelated to this play-style: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263

 

[fyar]

What if you did this in conjunction with OCC? Better capture a good first city 'cuz your not getting another one.

Volcanon, if you read more of the thread I've already done this. With OCC the game automatically razes any city you capture, even if it's the first one. The code (in this case incorrectly) assumes that you already had a first city, so it won't let you keep captured ones.

 

[NomadMan284]

Lastly, after trying that play style once, and not being able to see the bar at the top, I downloaded the EUI mod (which doesn't actually affect the gameplay, only the user interface). With the EUI, you can in fact see the bar at the top even when you don't have any cities. I like the EUI mod for many reasons unrelated to this play-style: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512263

Thank you for the tip. I downloaded the mod and placed it in the correct folder and then started CiV, but it did not appear with my other mods. Did I forget something? I noticed that according to the info on this mod that it has an improved city banner. I already have a mod that improves the city banner. Could this be the problem or could this cause a crash?

One other question. What is the best difficulty level for this game? I generally play immortal.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ShakaKhan]

I downloaded the mod and placed it in the correct folder and then started CiV, but it did not appear with my other mods. Did I forget something?

EUI doesn't show up with other mods as it isn't actually a mod. If it's installed, you'll notice it as soon as you settle your first city, the city screen is completely different.

Primeval has a youtube video that shows you how to do it, easy to follow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_wH4Q8W9I

 

[NomadMan284]

EUI doesn't show up with other mods as it isn't actually a mod. If it's installed, you'll notice it as soon as you settle your first city, the city screen is completely different.

You're right. Once I started the game there it was and I love it. This is much much better.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk