RB1 - Let's get started

It's funny when I was making that river (and it took me lots of tries to even get that), all I could think about was some adventure where you made fun of Sullla's river drawing skills.

 

Nice . It was good you didn't adopt any new social policy, that would have been unfortunate. Memo to team, don't do that yet (read timski's post). sunrise089, you are up.

Darell

 

So what are we planning to do after we get TGL and the Stonehenge (assuming we do get both)? We could easily kill England if we feel like it I guess, or we could expand with settlers a bit while teching along

 

From my experience, I am pretty sure that you have to gain enough XP to promote a unit before you can name it. Once it gets a promotion, there is an edit button located on the bar where the available promotions are able to be selected, click on that and you can rename it. Also, you can only do this while you have unused promotions. Once you pick a promotion, you are unable to change the units name until he gains his next promotion.

 

Yep, just tried this. There is a little "edit" link on the right side of the promotion window to allow the name change. It disappeared after giving the promotion.

 

1. Get TGL and Stonehenge (we're only goign to get Stonehenge).

2. ???

3. Profit.

Seriously, we want to get medieval, adopt patronage, and abuse the city state system. We're in danger of Firaxis patching them balanced before sunrise089 plays his turns .

Darrell

 

How many city states have we found so far? Only see Dublin in the report unless I missed something. Would be nice with some maritime city states to abuse

 

Yeah Dublin is a dud...hopefully we find someone who wants them dead .

Darrell

 

You guys want to try a specialist focus? Without Caste System I'm not sure how viable it is, but a maxed Scientist gives 1H/5S/3GPP per turn and only costs one food. That seems pretty good although the hammer comes really late in the game. We'd want about 13 policies. We'd also want Chichen Itza of course, but that is opened by Civil Service. Hagia Sophia would be nice.

Darrell

 

Is there any way to see how much influence each AI has with the different city states? Or can you only see your own?

 

@regoarrarr - Ok, that was a classic post. I'm sorry I didn't see it until now. I actually guessed that you were going to use a digital camera and photograph your screen. That was much better.

I don't think so, but you can see if a city state is allied with an AI. In that case I've found so far a 500g gift will pretty much get things to swing back to you. Maybe 750g...

Also, "got it."

 

Ok, I start the turn by posting the three bugs I encounter before I actually move any units over in the RB bug thread. The Alpha Test continues ladies and gents!

Also, I wasn't able to load the game via clicking on the save on my desktop, nor was I able to manually direct Civ5 to grab the save from a directory in-game. The path on my PC with a pretty default install process in Win7, in case anyone can't find it, is Hard Drive->Users->[User Name]->My Documents->My Games->Civ5->Saves->Single.

First, a look at the mighty American Empire. Regoarrarr, I love your style, but I get the feeling you're going to make me post screenshots for two...



And the tech tree, with what I think our tech path is selected:



Notice a few things - archery comes earlier, making archers versus metal units more a decision. The Wheel comes later. Construction earlier. And, Calendar comes much earlier, moving the "military vs economy" decision that accompanied currency/calendar vs construction in Civ4 to an earlier point. Fall from Heaven has Calendar where Civ5 has it, and I think it's a good idea. Now Civ5 needs to beef up the importance of commerce, or make calendar resource tiles better. Instead they've put an awesome wonder with Calendar which we're targeting, which works too, but not quite the same way it did in FFH.

Considering all of the posts above, we have surprisingly little planned out, which probably makes sense. I don't think any of us have played enough Civ5 to intuitively know something like "be sure to whip our capital 7 turns after we draft it" or some such thing.

T1 - Combat animations are on. And that means they're on for the entire game, unless someone knows how to edit a save file. Pocketbeetle over at RB offers online baked goods for such help, so I'll match that with an online adult beverage if we can figure it out

Anyways, we get our warrior (who couldn't move last turn) attacked by a Brute (barb warrior with unique name) during the interturn. Our unit looses 6 heath and theirs looses 5, so an above-average result for the barb. All units in Civ5 have 10hp, and you loose more or less based on unit strength and I THINK unit HP.

Here's a picture of our counter-attack after bombarding from our city tile (range 2, average damage seems to be around 3):



We won the battle, but our unit is quite wounded. Also, I don't think it was possible to loose this battle. I've not figured out the combat system, but my understanding is that battle outcome is fixed, though I don't think unit damage is.

At the end of T1 our worker completed our floodplain farm at our capital, creating an amazing 3/0/1 tile.

At the start of T2 Alex asks us this:



I don't even know what this really does, although the AI loves to request it. I turn Alex down (with the "polite" option) since I'm not quite ready to take diplo sides this early.

We get the writing tech popup right after I reply to Alex. Philosophy (enabling Oracle, as well as Temples and the National Epic) is due in 16t.

Also on T2 I reassign citizens to the new farm (3/0/1), the Oasis (already worked, and 3/0/1 as well), an unimproved floodplain (2/0/1), and the river hill tile (0/2/1). We're in a wonder race, and I'm willing to grow a bit slower to do this. I'm tempted to buy the other river hill tile now, but since that doesn't seem to be the consensus I'll hold off until the worker is ready to improve the tile.

On the start of T3 Alex now wants a Pact of Cooperation. No screenshot, just imagine different text and what I assume is different Greek speech (in Civ5 the leaders speak in their own language during diplo windows) over the last one. I accept this Pact, which I think just gives a positive diplo modifier.

At the start of T4 Alex starts to get annoying. Now he wants Open Borders. We don't have any land to protect yet, so I accept that as well. In Civ5 Open Borders last for 30 turns, but you can DOW and cancel them at any time (right?).

On turn five a not-so-fun Civ4 mechanic returns: we meet this guy:



And the very next action is Darius asking for a pact of secrecy against him. I turn that down as well.

T7 Bismark asks for the Pact versus Darius instead. I shouldn't be hating this mechanic in my fourth Civ5 game ever Our warrior is also healed up.

On T8 we meet the Cultured (free culture if you're their friend or ally) and Irrational (requests are random) city state of Kuala Lumpur, located to our north. The same turn we learn that Germany is "protecting" that city state. As I understand it, this means if you attack the city state you suffer a diplo hit with Germany. We also get a popup from Dublin asking us to kill barbs for them. We'll gain free influence everytime we do. Does anyone know if we need to kill the barbs near their city to get the reward?

T9 I continue the diplo storm by signing a pact of cooperation with Gandhi. In more important news, Washington grows. Since our next growth is 25t away (!, and with two improved food tiles to boot) I bit the bullet and spend 80g to buy a second river hill tile and assign the fifth citizen to it. Henge is due in 6 rather than 8, and we're stagnant on growth.

T10, we end on the worst possible note - Henge is BIDL Sorry guys. GLibrary is the placeholder for hammers, but none are invested.

Um...on the bright side...some more scouting:



The roster:

darrelljs - on deck
regoarrarr
sunrise089 - just played
Sciz - up!

The save:

 

Wow!

So I fired up Civ4 because of regoarrarr's awesome screenshot idea, with the plan to include one screenshot for flavor. I decided I'd do the "Henge has been BIDL" shot since it made sense. I fired up a Quick Speed Deity game was Washington, and seeded Ramesses and Bismark as rivals (Augustus also randomly spawned). I settled in place and teched Mysticism, and never improved any tiles. So here's the screenshot guys:



And I checked in WB, and we beat Ramesses by 1t! So we're crazy lucky in Civ4, and not so much in Civ5

 

That is early for Stonehenge to drop. I am playing an Emperor game right now where it didn't fall until turn 77. I had decided not to build any Wonders and really regretted not doing it anyway when it fell so late.

 

Wow stonehenge turn 40, that sucks. Anyways I get a "bring home exam" (exactly what it sounds like) exactly the minute I'm posting this, which is due tomorrow, so i'm going to have to start and finish it before I can do my turns. So while i'm doing that we can discuss what we do now that stonehenge is completed.

don't think we'll be able to sling CS since we still need three techs for that

 

A save would be nice .

Nice work sunrise089, nothing to do be done on Stonehenge. Probably rego's fault for playing the save on C4. We'll probably lose the Great Library too, I wasn't counting on that one so much. Without Stonehenge we're going to struggle a bit on the social policies. New plan: run a few scientists and sling Metal Casting for early Swordsmen ?

Sciz, you're up and I'm on deck.

Darrell

 

I see lots of people raving about Stonehenge and Great Library so far. Are they really that great? Culture is nice and all, but the social policies don't see that crucial to me. You can get a single free tech from any Great Scientist, probably much easier than building a wonder. In my own (admittedly very limited) experience, I'm always desperately hard up for production in the first 100 turns. I can't imagine spending 20+ turns on a wonder that early! Maybe if you had marble and were Egypt or something...

Anyway, I desperately need that early production for settlers, workers, and extra military units. Even running a quasi-farmers gambit with the bare minimum of military, I still can't really keep up on production. My initial impression is that the early wonders in Civ5 are like early wonders in Civ4 for Multiplayer games: somewhat of a sucker's build that sets you further behind. There's no way you're getting to 5-6 cities by Turn 100 if you pause to build those wonders, and I would much rather have those cities!

Of course I'm still trying to figure things out myself, so please feel free to disregard this entire post.

 

Kibitzers Comment:

I think if you are going to go to war right away or have turned off city states Stonehedge makes sense. That quick Honor boost and soon getting another policy choice is strong. If none of those are true, then it is less valuable.

 

Farmers gambit doesn't even exist anymore since the AI is so bad at attacking A warrior or two is basically enough in the early game, and are mostly useful for killing encampments to get favor with city states. Imo we shouldn't try to build the great library, because even if we get it, we won't be able to sling CS i think, so it wouldn't be worth it. I say either build a library for scientist specialists, or build another settler right away first and then go for a library.

Anyways, back to my exam

 

Well i'm kind of done now, so unless anyone posts within an hour or two and disagrees, i'm gonna play my turns and probably build a settler while doing so. Don't think the great library is worth it. I'll still continue on our tech path though