One thing (of many) that I liked more than Civ4 and Civ3

[narmox]

without technology trading, and with City States..

I was all alone on my continent, with 4 city states. The arabs were on another one to the north, and the English were busy beating the ********** out of Persia, Siam and France, on the big continent.

This was at Prince, my first Prince game and fourth game in total since I started playing.

Until the late Industrial era, I was the world leader in tech and wonder-building.

That never happened in Civ4 at anything above Chieftain, due to the insane tech trading between AI civs. I was able to hold my own, barely putting any resources into military until I saw a huge fleet of English infantry and anti-tanks coming my way, where I promptly popped a 42-turn golden age with Rationalism + a couple of great artists I was saving up + that wonder that adds 50% length to golden ages... Switched all cities to production focus and with my destroyer and submarine killed most of the infantries before they even landed.

Ok so I may be able to out-think the AI and pop golden ages at the right time lol, but I loved the fact that I wasn't DOA just for being alone on my continent and having no tech trading partner.

 

[Esham]

Sounds pretty easy tbh.

I have a feeling most noble-prince players from Civ4 are going to be rocking deity in no time on civ5

 

[narmox]

May be easy, perhaps not. I won Domination in 2046.. that's pretty late. Couldn't even get started building my spaceship, and was way too far for a cultural win.

So even though I won and had some amazing wars, and it seems easy, it wasn't so easy. I could have waited a couple more turns and won by score, and that's only because I took out 3 major cities from Liz which bumped her score just 50 points below mine.

Easy? Not so much. It just sounds easy, but I really did just win by the skin of my teeth. Or so it seems anyway.

I need to play more to tell if it's true or always like that. I may have been lucky. Or unlucky.

 

[Esham]

Well i have read a lot that people recommend to play on prince difficulty right off the bat.

Then there are other threads of people complaining about the game being easy but they are on chieftain or maybe warlord.


I am just waiting on what the deity players of civ4 say. if they were 50/50 players in civ4 and 100/0 players in civ 5 then its pretty easy to tell how the game has changed difficulty wise.

Although its nice to see that isolated starts aren't the end of you.

 

[Kietharr]

thus far this game does seem MUCH easier than civ4. I was a prince/monarch level player in civ4 and I can already very comfortably beat monarch, just my second game, with very little clue of what I'm doing. It took me months of playing warlord and then noble to transition from civ3 to 4, in part because of overexpansion but the AI also got smarter in the jump from 3 to 4.

It seems the AI actually got dumber in 5. Example, I am Rome, Hiwatha declares on me for no reason. He has a tech disadvantage, I am using longswords xbows and trebs and he has spears and archers with a couple of mohawks. He throws his units, including archers, at my defensive line, my mix of longswords and legions annihilate the entire army, then he sends me a peace deal in which he gives me ALL of his cities except for his capital, ALL of his resources, ALL of his gold and ALL of his gpt, crippling himself permanently.

In civ4, you could have a civ beaten down to a few size 2 cities on tiny islands and a couple of obsolete units and they still wouldn't give up everything for peace.

 

[Esham]

lol Kietharr, some of your post is signature worthy.

But one will hope the AI will get some patches in to smarten it up.

Thats probably the funniest scenario i have heard of. DIE CAESAR!!!! *couple years of war* Here take everything, just let us live oh great Caesar

 

[bob_d]

I always play Civ 4 with the tech trading turned off because I hate it.

You should give it a try, it makes Civ 4 play quite differently and more fun, in my opinion.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

Tech trading still exists, just in a different form. The two who are doing the teching require an amount of gold (I believe this goes up with difficulty?) and usually have to be in good relations.

In my current game as India I have a great tech partner in England. I've got some really good defensive techs so far from her, although I have no idea what I've been giving her.

ETA: How techs are picked, and from what list I don't know. What I do know is that it's really helped me keep up with techs when I only have one city.