Old Player, New Game: Some thoughts!

[Diosk]

Hey guys!

I'm Diosk. I recently jumped on the 75% off sale they had on steam and decided to check out Civ V!

Boy am I already hooked. I have some Civ IV experience but I'm mostly an Alpha Centauri guy. So far I've done a bunch (over 10) smaller easier games to get a feel for what is going on and how each Civ's advantages play out.

There are a couple things though that I know I already miss:

The ability to plant a forest.
The ability to be "introduced" to unknown Civ's through diplomacy.
Access to the "datalinks" when there is a proposal (for example, the AI pops up out of no where asking me for something, I can't figure out if it is a good deal or not!)
And lastly, nuke repercussions.

No terraforming is no big deal. Historially large scale terraforming hasn't ever been done (with regards to elevation and such, deforestation is another matter). But, the simply ability to plant a forest would be nice. Maybe around biology or something? I wouldn't want to see a plant/chop rush cycle too early.

I think diplomacy in general is a little underwhelming. The AI seems to not make much sense (I was surprised to find out denouncing actually prevents DoW instead of causing one) but I know that sometimes I don't get a chance to explore much and it would be nice to get introduced to other AI and CS. This sort of ties in with not being able to look at my demographics when asked for something... I don't always remember if I have something to spare!

Lastly, and this only matters because I just won my first game on King. There doesn't seem to be any repercussions from nuking anyone. I nuked a neighboring Inca civ at least 10 times and everyone was hunkiedorie with it. Now, I realize an Atom Bomb isn't a Planet Buster, but they do seriously impact the game with one click of a button (I droped the Inca AI almost 200 civ points with one bomb alone). But, I'd like to see some kind of political pressure against nukes. No embargoes at all? None of the other civ's are worried about fallout from half the map being nuked?

But hey, this isn't just a list of the complaints. I love this game already (though I have plenty of learning to do!) No unit stacking is awesome. It looks great, it flows smoothly, and it's fun. I can also say that the academy posts are very helpful!

I can't really think of much from Civ IV that isn't done in V better (religion is coming, obviously) but there are some things from Alpha Centauri I really miss! What do you all think?

 

[The_Quasar]

I played a huge amount of of Alpha Centauri too, and Alien Crossfire, the extension. Good days!

Welcome to the boards

Glad you like V, and I agree, 1upt is much more fun than stacks of doom!

I agree too with your planting forests... that would be a nice extra... perhaps we'll get it in the expansion, along with some other goodies?

You do get a diplomatic hit from chucking A bombs about, but, I think the reason you got no results was that you were far stronger than the others, and they were afraid to call you on it... that happens sometimes if you are far and away the strongest.

 

[gaiko]

Won't tell you the stealth bomber beeline strategy, that'll ruin the game learning adventure for you Suffice to say it is generic for any civ.

Hey guys!
No terraforming is no big deal. Historially large scale terraforming hasn't ever been done (with regards to elevation and such, deforestation is another matter). But, the simply ability to plant a forest would be nice. Maybe around biology or something? I wouldn't want to see a plant/chop rush cycle too early.

Know what you mean, but this would likely be unbalancing, especially for the Iroquois, who are already overpowered. I loved AC as an immersive concept, but the game was notoriously completely unbalanced ICS spam. Civ5 clearly strives for balance to the point of a vague dullness, but here the limits are 1) A poor little ol' commercial AI brain overloaded with the task of managing 1UPT and 2) a clearly unfininshed and unplaytested late game, with out of control GS chain bulbing, overpowered stealth bombers and nukes with no direct counter.

I think diplomacy in general is a little underwhelming. The AI seems to not make much sense (I was surprised to find out denouncing actually prevents DoW instead of causing one) but I know that sometimes I don't get a chance to explore much and it would be nice to get introduced to other AI and CS. This sort of ties in with not being able to look at my demographics when asked for something... I don't always remember if I have something to spare!

First, get InfoAddict mod and always play using it. It puts a button to vital info in the diplo screen.

Complaints about the opacity of the diplo game have been many, so you get much sympathy here. Contrary to complaints that the AI is "just plain crazy", there is a logic to the diplo game - it is just that you either have to figure it out via trial and error, or (as has already been done) by examining the XML - in which case why not duplicate that same info in human readable form. Go to the CivV War Academy, I'm sure that it has been parsed out into Humanese already.

Lastly, and this only matters because I just won my first game on King. There doesn't seem to be any repercussions from nuking anyone. I nuked a neighboring Inca civ at least 10 times and everyone was hunkiedorie with it. Now, I realize an Atom Bomb isn't a Planet Buster, but they do seriously impact the game with one click of a button (I droped the Inca AI almost 200 civ points with one bomb alone). But, I'd like to see some kind of political pressure against nukes. No embargoes at all? None of the other civ's are worried about fallout from half the map being nuked?

Welcome to the club! See above. Wait until you try a peaceful cultural victory with 3 cities as Gandhi: you soon change you name to Adolph Gandhi Hitler swatting and razing all the nearby AI cities used as launchpads for raining nukes down upon you over and over and over again.... again I recommend a Stealth beeline to nip that experience in the bud.

 

[The_Quasar]

Word of warning... if you're interested in Steam Achievements, don't use Infoadict, or any other mod, or you won't get them!

Although the Stealth Bombers are powerful, they come right near the end of the tech tree... most of my games are over by then.

I've found that the best strategy to try to avoid a nuclear war is to have your own nuclear weapons... if you have a couple of nukes in different cities (so that a nuke can't take them both out at once), I've found it's less likely you'll get attacked by nukes. However, if some civ, like Gandhi, is determined to nuke you, it will happen anyway.

Also, when you see a nearby civ building nukes and putting them in a city next to you, a preemptive strike can often be the best policy, take his nuclear arsenal out first with a nuke, then go for his uranium before he can build more...

 

[King_Course]

The things you touch upon, is the things most of us realise we have to accept. For now at least, the expansion coming shows promise, most noticably in the reworking of the A.I. If they don't improve on that then the expansion will be a dud, more or less.

Games always ending in nuclear wars is a turnoff for the longterm game. Intercepting nuclear bombers, uranium lost when used in a nuke to make it a hard choice whether to build them. Those thing would be good.

The Diplomacy game is there, it's just not transparent. Have you noticed you can hover your cursor over the friendly/guarded/hostile and get some info on the Civ? You are right that being affable is going to turn everyone hostile or guarded to you, having no army will do the same. Something new players don't realise and makes them think Diplo is ruining the game.

Well it's not, you just need to stand with your friends and not make friends with 2 enemies and such.

It's a good and entertaining game overall, lots of strategy and interesting choices during a game. We can hope they improve the weak sides and the game will be great. The DLC Civs are all worth it btw. So is ancient wonders, not sure if it comes with a civ, I have it all.

 

[Tiber4321]

@Diosk, If by Alpha Centauri, you mean Civ 3, then I understand where your coming from. I played Civ 3 and all the variants for 7 years. I never got into Civ 4, and I've been hooked on Civ 5 for 2 months now. I agree with your observations, in particular, the AI diplomacy is clumsy, there are not as many options. It seems odd that you can't trade world maps after Navigation is researched. I think Civ 5 challenges you to constantly explore, which I find tedious, Civ 5 would be even better if this were fixed. I also like the no unit stacking, although I would like to see, after some modern military tech is researched, the ability to stack 2 or 3 deep (this only makes sense). The inability to stack units is the the single most important factor that allows a player to survive and compete at the highest levels of Civ 5.