Share Your First BNW Experiences Here

Did someone else notice that lots of the AIs build only 3 to 4 Cities and then stops to expand even though there is lots of room left? Maybe because they pursue particular victory condititions?
 
Played a game as Pocatello.

Holy hell are those expanded borders helpful. Snagged the Fountain of Youth with Te-Moak.

Oda as it turns out settled Tokyo with the expressed purpose of taking the Fountain. I'm convinced that this is why he's been at war with me since Medieval.

I've got thick jungle to the north and east (north belongs to Ramses, who's been pretty benevolent thus far. East is Oda), plus the Great Wall. Armies don't make progress where I've settled.

Maria's to the south (which is mainly plains and grasslands.) She was a good trade partner until she apparently embraced her Habsburg lineage and marched her army to my front door. Some musketmen and a well-timed General warded her off. She still hates me.

Pacal was also a diligent trade partner. Too bad he didn't focus on his army, because Oda just knocked him out.

I'm essentially the only one focusing on Tourism Blue jeans.
 
Did someone else notice that lots of the AIs build only 3 to 4 Cities and then stops to expand even though there is lots of room left?

In my game on Prince, they're building more than 3 or 4 initially. They still do that "I'll drop a city here for no reason" thing but so far, I'm seeing new cities pop up, especially in places where cities were razed. Every inch of my continent is full just about. :king:

-Mark
 
Can somebody please send me a PM regariding if achievements unlock properly (primarily each civ's and the Win as X as well as Win the X victory as Y ideology)
 
Did someone else notice that lots of the AIs build only 3 to 4 Cities and then stops to expand even though there is lots of room left? Maybe because they pursue particular victory condititions?

Yep, and some AIs do things old fashioned and get large. This is good news, it means the AIs don't single-mindedly go wide no matter what anymore (even though some still do). But yes, I did notice this. After France built his 3rd city, even though there was a nice big plot of land between our empires, he never took it. He got 3 cities and decided it was enough (then the Zulu came in and settled it anyway).
 
The AI seems way to peaceful. Thought the new Arabian UA was religion spreading through trade routes, Venice can do that...
 
Small Continents, King, Standard, Poland
Right next to Morocco, my trade routes with them are freaking AMAZING, no other way to describe it. +11, +12, +13 gold between my capital and their 3 cities I have routes with. Tying science and religion into the trade routes makes for some interesting decisions in regards to how you set them up. Do I really want to give +3 extra science to Brazil (because of my tech lead) just for an extra +1 GPT? (As an example).

This is badly-balanced. The tech is an issue early in the game, when it may prohibit you from trading, but while the income you get scales as the game goes on, the science leak never does. Okay, by the 19th Century I'm leaking 1 bpt to Venice - why do I care in an era when everything costs over a thousand beakers to research?

The changes to gold (not being able to sell to AI) and the tech tree (all the new building additions, wonders, etc) make the early game a lot more interesting because of the decisions to be made.

I agree. Building maintenance is now highly relevant early game - I built many fewer, and more specialised, sets of buildings than I usually do, because trade can be lost readily and you don't want to be in the red for long - eventually you need to be able to sustain a domestic economy with trade mainly as profit. Unfortunately this does not translate much or at all to the late game, when gpt from trade is often silly (I had sea routes providing nearly 30).

The cultural UI, uh, makes my head hurt trying to decipher it. I am sure it will come with time, but it's completely different and there is A LOT of information on those screens, and I haven't even gotten to the part of the game where tourism, archaeology and great works really start to matter.

Yes, it's terrible - took me a while to work out how to switch Great Works.

I used a Great Artist to create a work called "Naked Lady Looking in a Mirror" (or something like that) and put it in my palace. If you click on the great work in your city screen it replays the little video from when the work was created. Nice touch there.

Why, though, do the artworks all have individual art, but the writings and music generic screens? Also the music selection so far isn't too varied - I was looking forward to snatches of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" from Great Musician Hank Williams, but so far I've only seen European classical composers, despite figures like Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Jerry Lee Lewis being generic "Great Artists" in the past.

Also, something seems to be off with culture generation - I didn't focus on it, didn't have a full set of culture buildings in any city, didn't have cultural policies (not even the Tradition or Liberty openers) or beliefs, and yet I was generating over 100 culture a turn and finished 3 trees with no effort, when previously I'd have had to focus some attention to achieve that. I don't like the sense that one of the game resources has become irrelevant (not in game effect, but in the sense that you don't need to put any work into it). It is indeed the opposite of tourism - tourism you have to actively work, for a resource that for most of the game gives you a marginal effect. Culture now seems a route to free bonuses for no effort. I hope I'm wrong.

In G&K you basically always had a second or third copy of one resource close by your capital, so you would have luxuries to trade. In this game I didn't have any second copies until I founded my third city, but instead had 1 each of Gems, Citrus, Truffles, Ivory, Marble, Incense. Anyone else seen anything like this or was this completely random?

I think it may partly be an artefact of difficulty level - I often found singleton resources in my starting city in G&K (though more rarely than duplicates). On my start with BNW, however, I had two whales next to one another.
 
Also the music selection so far isn't too varied - I was looking forward to snatches of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" from Great Musician Hank Williams, but so far I've only seen European classical composers, despite figures like Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Jerry Lee Lewis being generic "Great Artists" in the past.

To actually play clips of the music of those artists would require licensing fees. They have stated before that they avoided anything still under copyright.
 
PhilBowles, thanks for your writeup. You're right, Duel map is probably the worst one to play on but I look forward to seeing your play on a normal, standard map.

That's tonight's task... Again as Indonesia to give them a fair run.

By the way, I was going to try a "My first game" thread with visuals, but the game crashed when I tried to take a screenshot. No idea if this was just an unfortunate random event or whether it's a new bug with BNW, since I didn't try again.
 
That's tonight's task... Again as Indonesia to give them a fair run.

By the way, I was going to try a "My first game" thread with visuals, but the game crashed when I tried to take a screenshot. No idea if this was just an unfortunate random event or whether it's a new bug with BNW, since I didn't try again.

I had a screenshot crash, and one other person on this forum claimed the same thing. I suspect it's a bug.

It's a funny bug because you would think that reviewers and beta-testers would catch it since taking screenshots would be useful for both of their objectives.
 
Got up this morning and had about 20 minutes before I had to go to work. So, I updated Steam, installed BNW and rolled a new game.

Standard, Continents, Normal size, Prince (Yeah, I suck at CIV :D ), Shoshone. I did turn off Time Limit victory, though. Hate losing by points at 2050. :p

Got very lucky with my start position. My settler was already standing on a marsh, right by the origin of a river. Put my capital right there, managed to get 1 Marble, 1 Wine and 1 Wheat inside my borders.

Sent my Pathfinder out exploring, found two ruins (I went Culture, then Population) and met Egypt. Found a couple city states, ran into a Babylonian unit, and then found a Barbarian camp to the southwest. And this is where the game surprised me. Normally after two or three rounds fighting barbarians, the unit will get enough XP to level up. The Pathfinder didn't, and I had to retreat to heal.

By this point, I had built a monument & a worker (went Trad instead of Lib), but I had to pull him back into the city because a barbarian unit came down from the north. Started building a second Pathfinder, and that's where I had to leave for work. This was turn 40.

Oh, and my adviser said I could build a caravansary, but I was kinda tied up building the Pathfinder at that point. Now I can't wait to get home and keep playing! :twitch:

One other thing I noticed is that no one has started a pantheon yet. Normally, I'd see somebody had started one by now. This might be the first Civ 5 game where I get first dibs on a religion!

Edit: Oh yeah, I've only got 200 gold. Taking that away from rivers really does put a crimp on starting!

May just have been my starting location, but there are a lot of tweaks that make the first building (and tech) choices a real choice. For instance, Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working are now both competitive with Pottery (the latter less so immediately, but getting it in time - by a turn - to reveal iron to settle with my second city was a big deal). The lighthouse is more important than the default granary for early food production with the right tiles. And a caravan and a settler cost about the same - which you go for first will depend on whether domestic or international trade best suits the landscape you have.

Built the Borobudur,

Gah! Pet peeve (and I know it may not be a fair one, since English may be a minority native language on this forum), but I loathe people adding "the" to proper names. Mostly if "The" is appropriate, it's in the name of the Wonder. Borodbodur and Petra are proper nouns, like Chichen Itza, Notre Dame or Big Ben - there's no "the".
 
REALLY loving Brazil's UA. Just set yourself up with the Guilds and proper structures, make yourself as happy as you can, feed your population, and

Velada! You make all Great As, Ms, and Ws better than anyone else during Carnaval! Vivo Brasil!
 
I think it may partly be an artefact of difficulty level - I often found singleton resources in my starting city in G&K (though more rarely than duplicates). On my start with BNW, however, I had two whales next to one another.
I think it's just chance. Difficulty level doesn't play a role in map generation.

Question for you Americans who already have the chance to play the game:
Has anybody had the chance to play as Indonesia and found a town on another continent? It was never clear how those new luxuries got generated - in the town centre? Next to it? They cannot be destroyed, so they are already 'improved' right away? :confused:
 
I noticed that (at least on Deity), Resources for GPT got nerfed.

Used to be 7g/30 for "Neutral," now it's 5g/30!
 
I just got the game installed.
Preparing to embark on an epic adventure in a brave new world.
Until I run out of time and have to work on my report... for a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
 
Yes, but you have to pay maintenance on the roads. It's hard to afford that maintenance cost until it's complete without the caravans.

I usually operated in the red while roadbuilding in G&K. I usually have enough gold to be able to afford it for the turns needed to complete the road.

On the topic of trade routes.
I am seriously reluctant to trade with other major civs because if I am ahead in tech, then they gain a pretty nice bump in their science research. I'd rather keep the trade to the city states, which generate the same amount of income.

Spread your trade between civs. The bump for any one trade route is small - seems to be calculated as 1 bpt per tech you have that the other side doesn't. Besides, I'm usually behind in the early game when this bonus is meaningful.

I got chills when I met Enrico. His body language reminds me of the Emperor. I felt lucky to get out of there without getting a lethal dose of Force Lightning.

Yes, they're really gone to town on the new city-state leader screen...

I quite like the way he's always gesturing at the city as if to say "Hey, look, I've got the coolest background".

Trading is absolutely essential to money making. I had 4 coastal cities on Pangaea and no real ocean access. Cost me some money. I found I had less money in early and late game with less tile gold. It also hurt my culture game as it was hard to reach civs for trading route bonuses to tourism. With sea routes being so powerful I found treasure fleets really useful, which might strengthen Exploration.

Exploration still looks fairly weak to me, and it was a tree I completed. However, you will need a full complement of naval buildings in most coastal cities (I heard mutterings that the Harbor felt nerfed before G&K hit, but it's probably the most efficient single way of obtaining domestic gold left in the game), and while Exploration doesn't give you a lot to manage happiness this boost is useful.

Oh and for those hoping for a happiness nerf, both zoo and stadium have lost happiness. Add in potential ideological unhappiness and late game might actually be happy challenged on higher levels.

I actually found myself a lot more limited for happiness than I'm used to and struggling to find enough happiness buildings - however I was playing a larger empire than usual, and without either the Tradition or Liberty happy policies (which make a big difference), so it's difficult to compare directly.

Also, war weariness makes avoiding even low unhappiness critically important (units lose fighting effectiveness with every point of negative happiness now). An embargo on my whales (which succeeded because, being unused to the system, the delegates I assigned to block the motion voted yea instead in true Baldrick fashion) actually hurt.

For World Congress, if you play on a low level and are smart you can dominate it all game.

Or on a high level on a Duel map...

2 - Not my experience at all so far.

Again I can't comment because duel maps tend to be easier, however I did notice a couple of things. Pike-spam is gone (and Ironclad spam is in - oh joy. Never saw a single Great Galleas though); with the rebalanced Iron Working route the AI seems to favour that with its better promotion structure now, which should help them late game.

The AI now makes extensive use of Great People - Venice had two Holy Sites and a Manufactory in its borders, and seemed to use GEs to wonderspam (that's how they got Eiffel, at least). The lack of academies and preponderance of prophets may show that they still aren't ideal at prioritising GPs, however.

3 - Again, not at all my experience so far. In fact, they seem to be playing more aggressive in my games.

Enrico was passive for a lot of the game, but that may partly be that AI (not building settlers seems to mean they're less inclined to covet your lands immediately), and partly the way Duel games go generally.

EDIT: I didn't address Jon's finding that gold was more abundant, as I found something similar in the late game. But in my case that wasn't trade route related - in my permawar with Venice, I had only 11 gpt from the sole international trade route I could use (with Ragusa - ironically given Venice's real-world history, the only one of the four CSes on the map Enrico didn't puppet). It was due to the Mausoleum of Helicarnassus; a game with six independent GP counters (one each for Artists, Writers and Musicians; one for Engineers, Scientists and Merchants; one for Prophets; one for Generals and one for Admirals), in which I had large late-game faith, and with several new ways to accelerate GP production makes the Mausoleum HUGE. And the 4gpt I was getting from its stone and marble bonus is significant with the reduced domestic gold income from other sources.
 
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