RB3 - Daring Deity with Ottomans

[Sullla]

Oh - sorry about that. I didn't realize that the Civ5 burnout had hit so hard. I'm planning this to be my last game too, no interest in continuing on after beating Deity once.

Roster
Sulllla
pi-r8 [luddite]
alpaca <<< UP NOW
uberfish <<< on deck

If you can play before leaving on Friday, you're up next alpaca. If not, then it will be uberfish's turn. Thanks for joining us for two turnsets, SevenSpirits.

 

[pi-r8]

Er... dang, I thought I was clear that I didn't want to play any more. Thinking about it once more, I can't say I've changed my mind. :/

Very cool that we can get Aztecs and France fighting each other now.

OK that's fine. I misunderstood what you said earlier, but I can understand how you feel. Fighting endless wars on deity level is really stressful and tedious, and not a lot of fun.

 

[pi-r8]

I'm surprised you were able to hold on to Ravenna with that huge mass of French units, great work. I feel the same way about small frontline cities - they're a deathtrap for capturing units most of the time (actually they can be this way on civ4 deity too.)

I guess pushing east of Akhetaten is safest after artillery, if we road the hex SE of Akhetaten we'll be able to bridge into a hex outside Siamese cultural borders. The other thing we should do is keep an eye on the Egyptian demographics to see if Siam decided to switch the majority of its forces to that front.



About time! I signed a pact of secrecy 30 turns ago, guess it finally worked. We should definitely take this deal ASAP so Monty burns his troops against France instead of us.

I can't take any credit for defending Ravenna, since I never even tried. That's just pure AI stupidity. Or maybe it's a good move on their part, since every time they captured the city I just retook it and killed the unit inside.

Attacking east from Akhetaten would definitely be a lot easier with artillery. We can bombard the Siamese city from inside the safety of Akhetaten, and then take it in one blow with our knight down below. I also sent a settler down there to claim that neutral road for us. It's just annoying seeing him look so vulnerable and defenceless, and not being able to do anything about it now!

Definitely take the war deal, I need to remember to be more careful to check those possibilities in the future.

 

[javaja]

Lurker:

Reading this does show the brokenness of AI more than anything, I think. What I can't help but think after reading Uber & Acids Civ 4 Deity SGs is that, if the AI was a lot better, people might be saying it's broken for the opposite reason.

The ICS strategy seems to be the Civ 5 version of cottage spam - instead of boring cottages, it's boring un-specialized (mostly) city spam. Slogging through units is rough - question for Uber is, is it worse than your commentary about Civ 4 Deity SG (as Egypt, with acid, Blake, Mark, Muti) causing "YOU to be getting WW yourself."

I guess what I'm wondering is, since Deity is designed to generally have massive AI advantages in terms of production, economy, units... isn't it a good thing that with proper planning and strategy, it doesn't overwhelm you? I'm pretty disappointed with Civ 5 too, I think it's a poor production in the same way I thought CivRev was a poor production, but I think the "brokenness" of the settings is really mostly an issue of AI's poor utilization of its advantages.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Oh - sorry about that. I didn't realize that the Civ5 burnout had hit so hard. I'm planning this to be my last game too, no interest in continuing on after beating Deity once.

Roster
Sulllla
pi-r8 [luddite]
alpaca <<< UP NOW
uberfish <<< on deck

If you can play before leaving on Friday, you're up next alpaca. If not, then it will be uberfish's turn. Thanks for joining us for two turnsets, SevenSpirits.

Like I said, my apologies. I basically never promise anything I might not deliver, but I just grossly miscalculated this time. I did enjoy my first turnset even though the game itself isn't very good. Ah, back when we had like four units. I can control the heck out of four units.

 

[uberfish]

So the problem with civ4 deity is that a lot of starts are essentially automatic losses that are out of your control because some psycho like Shaka decides to rush you early, or you can't get enough land/resources because some protective AI boxes you in. As far as the war-fighting goes, I think the tactics are actually more interesting in civ 5 because terrain plays a much larger factor, but the tedium of having to kill so many units is about the same. I wouldn't want to play out a game like this one with ICS + constant war in SP.

 

[Sullla]

My issues with Civ5 don't have anything to do with Deity difficulty. When you crank up the difficulty that high and give the AIs all those bonuses, it always gets a little weird. I didn't enjoy Deity very much in Civ4 for the same reason, because the game was nearly impossible to beat at that level (truly impossible pre-expansion before the difficulty was watered down) and victory was dependent on a mixture of luck and following certain narrow strategies. If the player wasn't rigging the map in some way, they would usually follow some combination of Great Scientist lightbulb trades + Liberalism slingshot + Nationhood rifle draft spam, and that ultimately wasn't that interesting to me.

So no, it doesn't really bother me that Deity in Civ5 has a kajillion units to wade through - I expect that. My gripe with Civ5 is that any difficulty level under Immortal is an absolute joke to play, and the gameplay itself is not varied or interesting for very long. In Civ3 and Civ4, I could (and did) play dozens and dozens of games, just having fun exploring different elements of the design. City placement was always interesting, I enjoyed managing the diplomacy in Civ4 (with a mixture of religions, favorite civics, tech trades, and so on), manipulating the workers for maximum benefit, etc. Some of my favorite games were based on nothing but cultural push, never firing a shot in anger and trying to flip as many cities as possible. There were so many ways to play the game, and it was such a rich gaming experience.

I just don't get that feeling from Civ5. The social policies are the only part of the game design that offer real, meaningful choices. They're working well, but everything else isn't. City placement essentially doesn't matter. Tile improvements and worker management - the lifeblood of Civ3/Civ4 - have been lobotimized. You would *NEVER* delete captured workers in the previous games, and we delete workers all the time in Civ5. Nothing for them to do, after you connect cities with roads and spam trading posts. Diplomacy isn't interesting, because there essentially is no diplomacy. No techs to trade, impossible to make friends, all the AIs ready to attack at the drop of a pin. There's no religion, all of the Great People aside from Scientists are worthless, cash-rushing stuff works better and faster than building it yourself... In the end, there's very little to do in this game other than go to war with the AI, and as tactical war games go, this is a rather mediocre one. The AI stinks, and other games just do it better. Civ5 tries to be both an empire building game and a tactical war game, and ends up doing both rather poorly.

Sorry to go off track there for a bit. I just don't feel like this game offers very many interesting choices or decisions. Anyway, good luck alpaca, on with the show.

 

[secondbest]

lurker here:

I agree with all the points sullla has made in various posts and also on his site. Also the 'borg analogy' in this thread is dead on I think. But considering this new problem of "war burnout"... I was thinking about it in the last few days. As I was reading the last post by sullla it struck me

In the end, there's very little to do in this game other than go to war with the AI, and as tactical war games go, this is a rather mediocre one. The AI stinks, and other games just do it better. Civ5 tries to be both an empire building game and a tactical war game, and ends up doing both rather poorly.

The empire building aspect need many fixes and many many good suggestions are all around this forum. Some mods made great strides. I especially like the 'city states mod'.

Anyway back to 'trying to be two games at once' I think the game definately needs to seperate the two. It is quite weird to play tactical warfare on a strategic map anyway then why not sandbox it? I mean let the armies travel on a single hex like stacks of doom but when a fight occurs take it to another tactical map where all units should occupy one hex. If any of you played heroes of might and magic or the new brilliant king's bounty you might get the picture. Let the strategic map be strategic. Let the tactical map be a hex map of just one tile. The fight can occur on one tile but a totally new tactical map can be generated. If the tile is desert the tactical map can have more desert squares and stuff. A city siege might be wayyy better. You can make cities cover more than one tile according to their size making the tactical aspect much different. I am sure there are many things that can be done.

I don't know how can you integrate this to number of turns but I think it can be handled.

 

[uberfish]

Civ4 deity is really a huge distortion of the game, you're right in that it forces players into exploiting all the overpowered mechanics to the fullest in order to compete (slavery, draft, lightbulb+trade.) I think my main criticism of civ5 would be how poorly the economy is balanced, the terrain-dependent city improvements are meant to encourage thought about city placement but maritime-ICS and/or mass puppeting renders them all irrelevant really.

 

[elley]

Lurker

Civ4 deity is really a huge distortion of the game, you're right in that it forces players into exploiting all the overpowered mechanics to the fullest in order to compete (slavery, draft, lightbulb+trade.) I think my main criticism of civ5 would be how poorly the economy is balanced, the terrain-dependent city improvements are meant to encourage thought about city placement but maritime-ICS and/or mass puppeting renders them all irrelevant really.

Maritimes are probably the only thing that need to be addressed, especially when combined with ICS what tile improvements are concerned.

I don't believe the tile improvement problem itself is as big as many believe. If you don't plant your cities carefully with some key resources in them, yes a city will have low production, however, if you have some mountains and some fish, combined with the right improvements, you can grow 120+ production cities easily. If you plant them poorly, yes, tradepost seem to be the strongest option, combined with maritimes.

The trade post spam has possibly blinded some people to the other ways this game can still be played. It's being made possible by the rush buy everything feature obviously, which makes gold the universal resource. However, you could find this realistic in the modern era maybe, but perhaps it should be toned down in earlier ages, where shear labour was what accomplished things.

If you chose to, you can have an enjoyable time on every diff settings besides deity (which I don't find fun ever), without using tradepost spam + rushbuy stuff. In the end, it will probably also turn out to be more powerful than rush-buying the entire universe, as 7-8 well placed, fully grown cities will be able to produce more units than an entire ICS continent will be able to rush buy. (also not that, even besides all building maintenance and a smaller amount of tradeposts, you will still be making enough money to ally city states without problems, and rushbuy the occasional unit).

You are also more flexible in an extent when switching between growth / production / gold.

I tried ICS a couple times, but I never really liked it. Yes it's an easy way, but it's definatly not the way I enjoy the game.

 

[alpaca]

Maritimes are probably the only thing that need to be addressed, especially when combined with ICS what tile improvements are concerned.

I don't believe the tile improvement problem itself is as big as many believe. If you don't plant your cities carefully with some key resources in them, yes a city will have low production, however, if you have some mountains and some fish, combined with the right improvements, you can grow 120+ production cities easily. If you plant them poorly, yes, tradepost seem to be the strongest option, combined with maritimes.

The problem is actually the other way around: City placement barely matters. If you have some hills, you'll have a good city due to maritime food. A lot of the resources are totally useless because they aren't really worth more than building a normal improvement (sometimes you'd actually prefer to have another improvement) - except for luxuries if you can sell them for a decent price.

If you build a grid of cities you're also practically sure to have a few that can be good production centers, especially if you let them work tiles from other cities' hex. But you'll also have all those filler cities running science.

I think I should be able to play my turns today, didn't see that SevenSpirits wanted to drop, either

 

[darrelljs]

lurker's comment

Its definitely more than just Maritime. The diplomacy is horrendous. This is the worst version of civ ever in terms of tile improvements and lack of fun in worker micro/citizen assignment. The tactical AI is pathetic, which is a shame because I do think this is an area where the game could shine. I had an interesting map where I was on a peninsula and the only way to the mainland was through a narrow mountain pass, and the AI founded a city on the other side of a river down that pass. It was very interesting to figure out a way to break through and take the city with minimal losses pre-Artillery. Most of the time however you can simply setup a death trap for the AI to blunder into, and that's just a shame.

Darrell

 

[MuonConspiracy]

Lurker Comment

lurker here:

<snip>
Anyway back to 'trying to be two games at once' I think the game definately needs to seperate the two. It is quite weird to play tactical warfare on a strategic map anyway then why not sandbox it? I mean let the armies travel on a single hex like stacks of doom but when a fight occurs take it to another tactical map where all units should occupy one hex. If any of you played heroes of might and magic or the new brilliant king's bounty you might get the picture. Let the strategic map be strategic. Let the tactical map be a hex map of just one tile. The fight can occur on one tile but a totally new tactical map can be generated. If the tile is desert the tactical map can have more desert squares and stuff. A city siege might be wayyy better. You can make cities cover more than one tile according to their size making the tactical aspect much different. I am sure there are many things that can be done.

I don't know how can you integrate this to number of turns but I think it can be handled.

Some similar ideas being discussed here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=395070

 

[alpaca]

Turn 155

The first order of office, as usual, is looking at our cities. Then, I bribe Montezuma into war against Napoleon for 230 gold. Our tactical situation is, let's say, interesting.



There are no units near Muang Saluang at the moment. However, the city has a whopping 38 combat strength, making it very hard to capture. I found Eskisehir in the vicinity to have a strongpoint on the other side of the river to fall back to and heal. I decide to take a little risk and move my scout further forward... which reveals some units. Dang. The elephant can attack me next turn but the knight has 2 shock promotions, so I hope he'll survive. I move a cannon into Eskisehir.



Near Ravenna I try to take out a musketeer with our Sipahi (and then abuse the pillaging ability) but fail. I decide to bring in some units from Cumae seeing there probably won't be an attack there within the next one or two turns.

I spend some money to upgrade a Janissary to a rifle, which will be my favourite moneysink in the next turns because they keep their cool abilities.

I puzzle why Istanbul finished a Monastery and ponder building a wonder. I quite like both hichen Itza and Himeji Castle. Longer golden ages and a +25% combat bonus in our (almost exclusively defensive) wars seem to be quite strong. I decide to try my luck with the castle because we don't really seem to need much additional manpower now and most units I can build will soon be kinda obsoleted by artillery.

I could boost Fertilizer to 5 turns but decide against it in order to use the golden age a bit better.

Bursa has a finished settler whom I send due north to settle the frozen wastes


Turn 156

You remember that scout near Muang Saluang? He was destroyed by an elephant

I upgrade another two janissaries, off two musketeers near Ravenna.


Turn 157

Eskisehir was attacked quite heavily by Siam but survived. To be safe I will retreat the cannon out of the city but I wiped out the attackers (2 elephants, one musket) so it should be fine.

For some weird reason I don't understand, this pikeman seems to be a ghost
My cannon cannot shoot at it and the tooltip doesn't display it, either. I've seen invisible units before but no ghost units.



We are losing grasp on Brussels but instead of pouring money into them I decide to wait. We don't really need any more SP and they only have one musketman around as far as I can tell so I prefer to spend the money on riflemen upgrades.

Another settler is finished but we're running out of space so I decide to start preparing a raze of Osaka, which will be replaced by three cities of our own.



I retake Ravenna, risking one of our Knights but taking out a Musketeer. In fact I only did that because I mistakenly gave the knight a movement order so he'd have ended the turn in a vulnerable position. Let's hope he doesn't die... I really need to pay more attention.


Turn 158

Crap that's the second knight I wasted, and this time just because I misclicked. Oh well, the age of knights will be over soon anyways



Ram went into offense mode as you can see. The red rifleman was attacked by an elephant and lost 7 health but only did 4 damage (he's unpromoted and the elephant has two shock promotions)

This time I take Ravenna with the Sipahi, which I can safely retreat. Nappy seems a bit desperate and is bringing on pikes and archers, but he still has the largest army apparently.

The combat puzzle near Eskisehir and Akhetaten is quite interesting. I take out 3 psychophants (pun intended), one of them unfavourably with a Knight and position my troops so that I hope Eskisehir won't fall this turn with my cannon in it.

Antalya is founded in the icy north, otherwise not much to do economically.


Turn 159 - Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

Ram offers me a white peace, which I gladly accept (cherish that last round of elephant steak, soldiers) to focus on France. Unfortunately, we still have bugged open borders with him...



I leave a knight, two cannons and a rifleman on garrison duty there because the area has a border with France and you can never tell with Ram. He has tons of money, I sell him Wine and Cotton for a pretty good 150 considering the circumstances.

Ravenna falls to me again, hence the Shakespearean quote. I think I will be able to make some headway this time, France's force of melee units in the area is quite depleted and I take out a few siege units.

Konya finishes a university so it will build a settler there, too.


Turn 160 - Did I already say "Once More"?

Well, Nappy decided he'd rather have Ravenna for a turn than a bunch of units, and I say to him: Suits me. I take out the pikeman who captured it, another treb and a crossbowman. It could be Monty's presence makes itself felt by the depletion of French units despite him still leading the demographics. Or he just can't move his units faster than I kill them



Sipahis with sentry have an obscene range of visibility. Best... scout... ever. I imagine these eagle eyes saying "Hey, look, I can see the roofs of Rome from here" while the rifleman nearby says "What? I see only haze."

I start razing Osaka, which will take 10 turns and yields us a bunch of happiness (another patch change I wasn't aware of).

I remembered to sign peace with Ram's allied city states this turn, not that it really matters. Fertilizer is due next turn so I save a bit of money - you know what for.


Turn 161 - Heavy Industry

I bulb Dynamite with our GS. There is nothing immediately useful for us to research so I elect to go for Printing Press which offers less beaker waste and wait until we can research Compass in one turn (our research is, however, not growing very much due to our lack of maritime CS).



I upgrade our first two artillery, one in the east, one in the west.


Turn 162



Avignon is not something I am happy about. I hope we can take Nappy down a notch before he grows out of proportion. I invest some money to sow discontent between the AI (gnhnhnhn)



Another Great General is born when I take Rome. I will keep him around for now but we probably want to use him for a golden age at a later date.



To shorten our borders, I will try to continue expanding in the previous Roman empire.

I also sell some more luxuries just for good measure.


Turn 163

I get a bunch of new citizens this turn but unfortunately Antium survives due to a lucky die roll.

Otherwise, nothing much going on this turn.


Turn 164

Antium is taken, I kill two more Musketeers with more on our doorstep. Siam is moving his psychophants through our territory towards Greece while I push further into previous Roman lands, taking puppets until we have enough settlers ready.



I decide we can afford a three-turn Economics with our golden age over.


Turn 165

Siam stole Lhasa, the prick. Well, something for uberfish to tackle. I clean up a little so the military situation isn't so confusing when you take over but will leave the strategic decisions this turn to you (not that there are many right now).




Even non-golden-age inflated, we're doing very well. Keep in mind that we're running on pretty high science now, so our gold and production are correspondingly lower.

This turnset I actually had quite a bit of fun. I made some good progress against France, peaced out with Siam (at least temporarily) and didn't have to do an obscene amount of city micro


I stopped counting my kills after the fourth turn or so. I didn't lose anything except the two knights at the start (which were a total blunder) and killed maybe three units per turn on average, so the k:d ratio is greater than 10:1 in a conservative estimate, probably closer to 15:1


-----------------------------------------------------

Notes:

- There are some units healing, most noteworthy an artillery in Ravenna, make sure you don't forget about them.

- I left at least one unit on every major border so we're not caught totally with our pants down in case any of the other four civs attacks us. Feel free to move them if you think going all-out against France is better

- France still has a strong army, so be careful. They are sending at least two or three musketeers into our territory per turn at the current time. I'd start slowly pushing with artillery now. In fact, the demographics still show them as the strongest military player, with us on the bronze medal

- I captured a lot of workers from France which are currently replacing farms with TPs, some of them should probably be deleted later

- Near Osaka are three settlers waiting to plop in place once the city is razed

- We have a shitload of happiness, nothing I could really do about it with additional seafood... we might want to fall Montezuma in the back to free our earlier Maritime ally, Helsinki, at some point.

 

[TheArchduke]

The 33 happiness says it all really. That, a look at the crazy minimap and the decision to raze a good city to replace it with 3 crappy ones right inside your empire.

 

[javaja]

Delurk

Ah, I didn't mean to hijack this thread with a 'Civ 5 good or bad' topic. I was really just curious to see, from those with experience playing at Diety in both Civ V and Civ IV, what the most significant frustrations were, and how they compared against previous editions.

Sulla, Uberfish, and alpaca: thank you very much for your insights, I appreciate them and agree with almost all of your points. Thank you again. And now, back to the game.

 

[pi-r8]

hahaha, 33 happiness? that's hilarious. I guess that's what happens when you've only got one maritime CS. Anyway, good job taking Ravenna and Rome!

 

[Sullla]

Yeah, if we had access to a second maritime city state, we'd be producing substantially more gold and research. Hopefully we can roll over France and then get our old one back from Montezuma.

Those turns looked great, and now we have artillery! Just a lot of mopup work left to do running over five more capitals. The game's effectively finished at this point.

 

[anti_strunt]

Delurk

Ah, I didn't mean to hijack this thread with a 'Civ 5 good or bad' topic. I was really just curious to see, from those with experience playing at Diety in both Civ V and Civ IV, what the most significant frustrations were, and how they compared against previous editions.

Sulla, Uberfish, and alpaca: thank you very much for your insights, I appreciate them and agree with almost all of your points. Thank you again. And now, back to the game.

Unsolicited partial lurker answer

The most obvious thing seems to be the lack of a real military challenge. In Civ IV the AI was at least proficient enough in swinging its' huge stacks around that there was a real threat of being wiped out. Here, despite making war on three fronts simulatenously, a really bad turn seems to be mean "loosing a unit"...

 

[ThERat]

lurker's comment: Looking at this game and uberfish's immortal game, it seems that a 'normal' game doesn't feature any challenge at all. There is no threat by the AI to take over your empire (except maybe in the very early stages) as they are clearly inept of doing any sort of warfare. Can someone tell the AI to upgrade their crap units or beeline their research to important military techs and then use them properly? Is there any hope that the AI will ever be able to do that? Otherwise this game is dead.

I only see AW without city states as a true challenge left at this moment. Pretty one dimensional if you ask me.